What Music They Make
by CatsOnMars
Summary: When an unexpected conflict with the Volturi brings Jacob back into her life, Bella finds that being a vampire only makes it even more complicated for her to be in love with two people. J/B and E/B. Please review.
1. prologue: dissonance

_I want to be a kid again  
Combed down hair and Sunday best  
Knowing wrong from right, just rules  
My mother, my mother never told me  
Sex and love is not a game  
A game is something you can win  
And maybe something kind of fun  
But love is just a bloodsport, son_  
**"Bloodsport" - Sneaker Pimps**

* * *

**prologue **| dissonance

* * *

Now that Bella would allow Edward to buy things for her, he had had a beautiful, thick silver chain made for her to wear the heart-shaped diamond he gave her on.

"I would have given it to you this way to begin with," he'd told her teasingly, "if you hadn't been so stubborn."

Bella's mother could be suckered into buying anything and she remembered how she had once started wearing a bracelet with magnets in it that was supposed to be able to provide therapeutic healing. She thought of that when she took the heart off of the bracelet Jacob had given her and felt a strange kind of immediate relief from separating the two charms. Maybe wearing two things that practically magnetically repel each other could have the opposite of a healing effect.

When Alice first saw her wearing it on the thick-linked chain, sparkling below her throat, she confided in her with a smile, "I would have advised him against that. I think it looks a little gaudy being worn that way."

Bella rolled her eyes; Alice was never reserved about condescending to give anyone her fashion advice. "I don't mind," she laughed.

Still, it _did _call a lot of attention to itself, and her current human persona was not necessarily supposed to be rich. She didn't wear it in public that much.

One evening she was standing at the window in her and Edward's room watching a storm. A bolt of lightning struck through the sky so long and thick it seemed to slice the world in half, making a powerful crack that she heard so loud it was as if it had gone right through her body. At that instant, everything was lit for a split second as if it was day but with a colder color of light, and this drew her eyes down to her left arm crossed over the other at her chest, completely white and pale—and bare. She was not used to seeing that wrist naked. She remembered exactly where she had left her bracelet, but still felt at that moment like she needed to be careful not to leave it sitting around too long, and the thought made her turn right around and leave the room.

Edward found her circling his piano with her eyes focused close on it.

"You didn't do something with my bracelet, did you?" she asked him.

He shook his head and said, "I know I saw you leave it there."

Two days ago they had both been sitting at the piano bench as he taught her how to play an easy part of a duet. The little wolf charm had kept tapping noisily against the keys where it hung from her wrist, so she'd taken it off and set it up on the piano behind the upraised music stand.

Now it wasn't here.

She had never lost anything since she'd become a vampire. It wasn't like she would forget where she had last put something. And it was much too easy to very quickly and thoroughly search an entire house. Edward helped her do this. But the bracelet wasn't anywhere.

"You sure you aren't just sick of wearing the thing and making this whole thing up?" Emmett asked jokingly after they asked the others if they did anything with it for some reason. "I don't see how you could forget to put it back on."

"_Emmett_," Alice sighed heavily, rolling her eyes. He didn't seem to realize how saying this might make Bella feel awkward.

Bella just stood with her arms crossed, looking a little sullen. "I didn't _forget_. I just…didn't. I knew I was going to take a bath later, so I didn't bother."

Nothing ever seemed urgent to her anymore. She always had an eternity to finish reading a book, to decide what kind of a new car she might like to get, to get to see Paris or London. To put her bracelet back on.

It was gone. She didn't have any hope it was just going to turn up somewhere. How could it? How had it disappeared in the first place? It seemed to her like she had made it happen somehow. She felt awful, even though she knew to him it would never be a big deal. If he knew he would understand.

But she would not forget.


	2. I: nocturnes

chapter** I** nocturnes

* * *

It had been almost four years since Bella's transformation when the Cullens got a visit from three of the Volturi. Even if they had certainly taken their time about it, when Alice said they were coming it wasn't hard for them to imagine what for even if she could not see anything beyond their decision to come. Aro was still curious about Bella.

The Cullens had been remaining in Forks, keeping a lower profile there than ever before. As none of them were in school anymore, Carlisle was the only one who was still often seen. All of his foster children were assumed to have gone off to college. And Bella was never seen. She was thought to be dead.

During the last year she and Edward had started taking classes at a college that was a three-hour drive from Forks. She had finally become comfortable with spending more money than she was used to having and gotten an mp3 player; the long run to school she took with Edward every morning at daybreak with her headphones on had become one of her favorite times of the day.

Meanwhile, Emmett and Rosalie had spent some time away in Sweden together, Alice had been keeping herself busy with some volunteer work in Port Angeles, and Jasper had been getting a new degree through an online program. But it was now the beginning of summer and they were all home and together at the time they expected their company to arrive.

It was only Aro, Marcus, and Demetri. Aro took Carlisle's hand firmly with both of his, giving it one shake, and said, "It's so lovely to see you, old friend," and Bella could tell already that this evening was going to be mostly small talk and beating around the bush. She was already a little nervous; a visit from the Volturi had never before been something not to be worried about, no matter how harmless things looked, and Edward was especially unenthusiastic about welcoming them from the moment they entered the house. Even Alice had started acting uncomfortable and a little quiet since a while before they arrived, but if she had seen something new, she was choosing to just let everyone else find out about it in time. Bella was already waiting for some kind of chance to ask Edward what he knew was on their minds.

"I hope it is not an inconvenient time for us to just drop in like this," Aro said apologetically. "But I remembered that you would, after all, expect us anyway."

He looked over at Alice with a laugh. She smiled, reasonably at ease but still acting far from happy to see them.

They went up to the hidden study on the top floor where they could all sit because there was a long table for them to gather at. Bella dragged a chair out from the table and sat in it, only then looking to her side at Edward and seeing that he had pulled one out for her; she started to stand up again as if she was going to move to that one, but in an instant felt silly and stopped. He just grinned and laughed half-heartedly, sitting next to her in the chair he had meant for her to take.

Because of all this he was the last one to sit down, and then everyone was looking at them. Everyone except for Marcus, who stared at the top of the table absently. Bella remembered how Marcus had not seemed the least bit surprised by the kind of relationship he could sense between her and Edward when they'd met in Italy, even though seeing what he could tell about them by reading his thoughts had fascinated Aro. If he had been merely uninterested then, he seemed to not even notice their presence now.

Esme apologized for the mess, as there was various paperwork and some books and computer parts all over the place, but Aro cheerfully told her not to worry. Visiting other vampires who were settled in real homes was not something he did every day, and he seemed to find the comment funny. He was the only one of them who talked much at all, as Marcus looked around like he was intensely bored to be here and Demetri just loomed by them like a bodyguard.

"Bella, my dear." He finally addressed her after talking with Carlisle for a while about how he was still enjoying his human career. She smiled graciously, her hands together and still in her lap and her entire pose stiff. "When last I had the pleasure of seeing part of this family, I'm afraid you were in no condition to visit."

Edward, Alice, and Jasper had gone by themselves to Italy a few weeks after Bella was changed, as they had suggested they might visit. Edward had been uncomfortable about the Volturi practically monitoring Bella like a science experiment to see what kind of vampire she might turn into and wanted to go before one of them instead came here. Aro had been quite eager to get to know all he could about Jasper, as he was the only one in the group he had never met before, and politely asked for his permission to touch him almost as soon as they were introduced. A look into his thoughts was all he needed to see that they had kept their word about changing Bella and be satisfied. They stayed for a brief visit of small talk, neither Edward or Alice ever being asked to let Aro look at their own thoughts again, and then they left hoping they were done with having to worry about the Volturi from then on.

But now Edward was acting just a little anxious, in a way that was barely perceptible but still unmistakable to Bella.

"No," she answered simply, maintaining a polite tone but not trying to sound regretful. "I wasn't."

"Demetri has already told me that his talent certainly seems to exclude you," he said. "If it weren't for you being with the rest of your family, we never would have been able to find you."

She nodded. "My mind is still completely impenetrable to Edward, too."

He extended his hand a little. "May I? I'm sure we can expect…"

Knowing what he wanted to do, she nodded and reached her own hand across the table. He touched it briefly and then smiled, shaking his head. "Yes. Impenetrable you certainly are…But according to Carlisle's theory of what gives some of us unique talents, I would think we would have seen your uniqueness…_magnified _somehow."

"I would be interested to know what you were expecting," she said a little coolly, but also with some real curiosity. For a brief moment, she caught Alice looking at her knowingly where she sat at one end of the table.

"Oh, I can't say I had any idea what to expect," he said, laughing. "In all the many years I've been around I had never seen anything like you. You seemed almost _meant_ to become a part of our world. Too exceptional to remain a mere human."

She smiled dully. "Perhaps you could look at it that way."

"But you_ haven't_ found that you have any special abilities?" he pressed on.

Everyone else was so quiet. All eyes were on her. Able to easily tell that this was not making her comfortable, Edward took her hand in her lap under the table. They both wanted this to be over with, and she wasn't even sure why. There was an awful feeling in her like a big weight in her stomach.

"No, not really," she answered indifferently. "I was…well, I was_ different_ as a newborn. That was the one thing."

"Different? How?" He looked to some of the others at the table, as if they might be able to give a better account than she could herself.

Edward, at least, took the opportunity to remove all the attention from her alone. "Bella matured, if you can call it that, remarkably fast after she was turned," he explained. "It was not by any means easy for her, of course, but her appetite and ability to suppress her instincts developed a lot easier than is normal. She got used to being around humans unusually fast. After two months she was more like a year-old vampire and could handle being in public. She now has about the same level of self-control that I do."

This clearly took Aro completely by surprise. "Well, that's…that does make you unique indeed. I wonder if it means something more significant than you can tell yet." He was rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

"She was very sensitive to blood when she was a human," Edward said, "as you would remember."

His eyes brightened. "Oh, yes, of course. I saw in his thoughts—you really disliked the smell," he added, looking back at Bella.

She nodded. "It made me feel sick. Most people thought I just couldn't handle seeing it like a lot of people, but it was the smell that bothered me, even when nobody else could smell anything. I'd pass out. I don't know…We've considered that _maybe_ that has something to do with it."

"But surely you don't actually dislike the smell of blood now?" he asked, the idea seeming ludicrous to him.

"No. I have a completely normal reaction to it, I guess, but just not for a vampire who's so young. I'm already very sensitive to the differences in the way people smell."

"And I haven't even quite reached that point yet," Emmett interjected with a grin, his amazement showing clearly in his voice.

"Well, for someone who would choose your lifestyle, Carlisle," Aro said, looking where him and Esme sat, "you could not have ended up making a more suitable addition to your family. Even if you couldn't have known…"

"No, we couldn't have," Edward said, a little quietly. "She was…very lucky."

There was a sudden silence, and Bella attempted a light smile to alleviate the sinister mood. "I caused Jasper to lose quite a lot in a bet."

Jasper and Emmett both laughed lightly, but nobody else did.

"Well," Aro said, looking not a little disappointed, "some vampires I've known to have certain talents took as long as three years for them to start to develop. It can happen quite differently for everyone, and it depends on what exactly they can do, of course. But I suppose after this long, you would have seen all of your own potential."

Bella did not smile or say anything. She personally could not be more satisfied with being a prematurely functional and civilized vampire. It had been more than she could have possibly hoped for. But Aro had surely been hoping to see something more usefully offensive and powerful take shape in her.

She innerly shuddered a little at that thought, grateful that nobody at this table had the ability to see into her at all. That secret could not be let out. She didn't even want to think about it herself…

"Anyway," Aro said, finally seeming to address everyone and taking his specific attention off of her, "I'm sure you are all a little curious about why we would have come all this way just to drop by your home and catch up."

Carlisle raised his brow. "Is there some other reason? We weren't aware of any problem in this area…"

Aro laughed. "Actually, Carlisle, you are already perfectly aware of it."

All of the Cullens besides Edward and Alice looked completely perplexed.

"You see, I have a bit of a favor to ask of you," he explained. "It involves those werewolves that live near."

Faces went blank. Bella looked at Edward, her eyes wide. He looked very sorry.

Esme was finally the first to respond, sounding dumbstruck. "The _werewolves_?"

* * *

Bella had not seen anyone from the wolf pack since she had gotten married. They had stayed in Forks this long because for at least a while she had wanted to be where she could still easily find out about what was going on with Charlie and everyone else here she couldn't see anymore, and sometimes she heard things about them. She read about Sam and Emily's marriage in the paper. Sometimes when she was curiously watching Charlie in his house to see how he was getting along, Billy came over and she would hear him mention Jacob if there was anything significant to report about his current life.

There rarely was.

Billy usually came to visit with Sue Clearwater now instead of having Jacob take him. Bella supposed socializing as much as she could made her feel less lonely with Harry gone; the three of them made a little club of friends with lost spouses. One time Bella had listened to Charlie on the phone with Billy inviting him over and telling him Jacob should come over, too, if he had any interest in watching a game. Billy said he'd ask him, and after Charlie hung up she ran away from there much faster than was rational to think she needed to go.

Whenever she came back from going to Charlie's house, she went eagerly back to Edward's arms, knowing he was enough to make her forget the sting of separation from so very much and with him everything else would disappear. He had to be enough.

He always asked her softly, "How are you feeling?"

She never thought she had to think about it. She never_ could _think she had to think about it.

"I'm with you," she would say with a soft smile. "I'm wonderful."

And it was always like sinking under the surface of water together where they could not hear or see anything above. _Let me not think,_ she thought, _just feel nothing but this, let this one thing fill everything._

Vampires can be completely silent while making love. Just as when they run, their breathing remains calm and steady. It is not at all like the way it is for humans. The enhanced senses make it comparatively effortless. No sweat, no energy spent, no desperate grabbing and pulling and thrusting. There is instead smiling, deliberate touching, and whispering. Not like humans in dramatic movies so overcome with passion they practically attack each other like hungry animals, throwing each other against walls and tearing off clothes.

Bella could remember how the way Edward smelled used to be intoxicating to her like an inhaled drug that made the world spin all around her. She remembered how the lightest touch from him seemed to make every nerve in her body wake up alertly, morning glories opening to the sun. All he had to do was say something quietly in her ear with his velvety voice and it would make her completely disarmed and helpless, prey caught in a cage, incapable of resisting him. She could recall in intricate detail how on their wedding night all of him combined was almost too much, overpoweringly stimulating, but still she'd tangled her fingers in his hair tightly like she could not have him enough and probably could not have let go of him if her life depended on it.

It was different now when they were together, everything a more internal fire, no impatience or desperate and immediate need, both of them always much more controlled and clear-headed. There was nothing left of the dangerous pull toward her Edward had constantly felt because of the smell of her blood which had always been like an electric current binding them irresistibly, her veins all powerlines humming in a sort of reverberating music only he could hear. Undeniably they were the most loving couple, but they were as cool and calm as could be.

* * *

Jacob went on with life as life went on with or without him. Looking in the mirror and seeing that he wasn't aging made time seem so long and endless. Meaningless.

Some part of him had been buried away in the dark so that he could go on. Those few years ago he had gone half crazy on Bella's wedding night trying to make himself not think about things. Him that close to her. The image of them together that way, much too close, too dangerous, had become intertwined with the thought of him biting her, still too much for him to accept but all inevitable. Too late. All he still wanted was to wrap her up in himself and protect her from everything, keep her warm and shield her from that violent world of night she was plunging herself into. But instead he was forced to think about icy predator's hands touching her, and with that himself in his place instead whether he wanted to imagine that or not. No matter what was in front of his face, Billy or Sam talking to him, this was all he saw for days and days as he just waited to find out something that would tell him it had happened, she was changed, and he hadn't killed her.

He had wanted to phase again and really stay that way this time until he knew it had to be over. He had wanted to disappear. But he couldn't always deal with everything that way. He had known she would hear about it if he suddenly ran off, and she had enough to deal with as it was without him waving his pain in her face.

But as he stayed and dealt with it, his pain was instead unavoidably apparent to everyone else he was around and always in their faces. All day and night his life had become full of nightmares of cold, dead-pale skin and sharp white teeth tearing, her enclosed and trapped in one form with no relief of peaceful sleep like someone buried alive in the blind dark, spring hardening to ice and time stopped, endless winter brought with her descent. When Sam had started talking to the rest of the pack about how he was hoping Jacob would change his mind about not taking his place as the Alpha, Leah had once cruelly laughed and said back, "Him? Are you paying any attention to him these days? I don't care who his ancestor is. He's just about cracked."

Jacob agreed to do it after Sam got married. He could be starting a family soon, and would have enough other things to take care of. Jacob didn't have anything else but the pack anymore, so he figured he would have no problem taking on more responsibility than anyone else had.

Meanwhile, as long as there were no conflicts with the Cullens or other vampires for them to worry about he had to go on pretending life was normal. He had started working at a sports bar out of town, often for long shifts going late into the night to keep himself busy since he often didn't sleep easily and didn't need to sleep as much as other people anyway.

A girl his age named Lilah also worked at this bar. They had gotten along well and been very friendly with each other since the start of the eleven months he'd been working there. She had a great sense of humor and spoke in a sort of deep, throaty voice, the kind of girl who could have fun dancing around in the rain and would scream in excitement as she ran toward friends she hadn't seen in a while to hug them.

Lilah seemed to have been in a lot of bad past relationships, and for a long time Jacob had only heard her briefly mention things about guys she'd been with who sounded like the biggest pieces of scum he could imagine. Then one day her last boyfriend had showed up at the bar looking for her and made a big scene starting a fight with her. He claimed she owed him money for something—Jacob never got the whole story then and didn't really care because the first thing he saw when he came back from his break was him grabbing onto her arm tightly so she couldn't get away from him where he had pulled her into a dark corner and shaking her angrily. He towered over the guy, two heads taller than him, and it wasn't very hard to intimidate him into getting away from her while someone else went to get the manager.

He was kicked out and told never to come back there, but Lilah was worried he might start waiting around for her to leave some day and follow her home to go after her. After she told him he was crazy enough that she wouldn't put such a thing past him, Jacob sighed and said, "Jesus, Lilah. Great taste in men you've got."

She rolled her eyes. "And he had to make it look as shady as possible. Now everybody probably thinks he's a dealer and I'm a heroin addict or something." She was just acting annoyed by the whole thing, but he'd seen her hands shaking after he left and she had immediately sat down and lit herself a cigarette.

He took her wrist and drew her arm out, looking up and down its whole length. "Well, it doesn't _look_ like you're shooting heroin," he teased, and she laughed, smiling for the first time in hours. "So I guess I can trust you enough to take you home today just to be safe."

"Shouldn't I be the one who's worried about whether I can trust you?" she asked.

He shrugged. "I suppose. But I can at least promise that you're_ less _likely to end up in a dumpster going with me than if you leave here alone."

"Okay," she said in the same joking, sarcastic tone. "That makes me feel so much better."

It had all started that way. As nothing. Lilah told him the creep shouldn't know where she was living now, but even so it didn't seem like she was safe until she'd made it into her apartment and locked the door behind her. Their shifts usually ended together and he'd discovered her place was right on the way back to La Push anyway, so he started driving her home almost every night. First they often ended up getting so involved telling weird stories about high school or their old friends that they'd stay sitting in the car still talking a while before he finally walked her upstairs to her room. Then he started coming in and staying for an hour or two sometimes. They'd drinks beers or make hot chocolate and sit watching TV, Lilah curling up under a blanket and sometimes falling asleep next to him so that he would end up having to lock up for her by taking her key out and then slipping it back under the door.

It started out as nothing but didn't stay that way long. Everything advanced as it does between two people who like each other enough and aren't shy. When it ultimately and inevitably happened, it didn't feel late or on time or too fast or even as if anything had significantly changed. One night he found himself kissing her and saying easily into her ear, "You're beautiful," the only true thing to say if he was going to say anything, in a way that was completely honest but nonetheless sounded as casual as telling someone he liked their new haircut. And with her arms around his neck she smiled and said, "Thank you," then giggling because maybe that was unnecessary and quickly getting back to everything besides talking. They started sometimes spending the night together. It wasn't the beginning of anything, just what it was.

Jacob was sometimes amazed that Lilah could be such a lively, energetic person who smiled and laughed so much when she had so many dark stories to tell about her life. When she was eighteen her father had found out she slept with a boy from school who came over to do homework with her a lot and immediately kicked her out of the house with nothing but the clothes and money she had on her, telling her to go sell herself on the streets like the slut she was. That last boyfriend had started scaring her a while after she moved in with him, and after he threatened to hurt her once she packed her things while he was in the shower and slashed his tires so he couldn't come find her before she made it to a friend's house. He couldn't hold onto money long enough to afford new tires. That was why he was so pissed at her and was saying she owed him.

These things she told him could make his blood boil, but it wasn't enough to make him too angry. Not like the story behind Edward killing Victoria's mate or_ "That's none of your business" _catching him meanly by surprise. Nothing seemed to shock him much anymore. When he'd come out and seen the ex-boyfriend calling her filthy names in a low growl, he had stayed pretty calm as he went to tell him to leave her alone. He had stood there watching a strangely long moment before reacting, as if he didn't feel like he could really do anything for her.

"Why don't you just tell the cops about this guy?" he asked her once while they weren't very busy during a shift and had been talking about him.

"Oh, I don't know," she said. "If he turns up again giving me trouble, I probably will. But there's been no sign of him since that one time." She sighed and then laughed a little. "Maybe I should just get myself a gun…or a dog."

Jacob laughed hard before he could stop himself, but cut it short.

"Dogs'll turn on you," he then said with a smirk. "Just like some men."

"Yeah, but you can forgive dogs," she said. "They can't help it. They're just animals. It's their nature."

He thought of Leah and Emily both, like they were suddenly one woman, frowning as he looked away from meeting Lilah's eyes.

The last time Jacob and his friends phased to go out for a run, they saw everything about her life he knew.

_She tells you these things? _Embry directed the thought to him.

_Sure,_ Jacob had responded._ I mean…we're kind of good friends._

_Kind of? _Quil seemed to think his choice of words was funny.

_But you're not serious about her, _Embry said. He didn't have to make it a question. _Well, it's better than being alone, right?_

Running his fingers through smooth hair, pressing warm softness close against his hard and strong body made to protect, he didn't have to assure himself. Right.

She didn't look at all like the other woman that was always in the corner of his sight whenever he tried to look at any woman as if he was seeing double, not like that petite, frail-figured girl. Lilah had short, dark blonde hair and was considerably tall, all shapely curves pushing at the seams of faded jeans and T-shirts. His huge hands still swallowed her. She said once that it was impossible not to feel safe with someone his size.

She had said it in a harmless enough way, joking, but it still worried him when things like that came—slipped?—out of her mouth. He just hoped this wasn't different for her than it was for him. That would be all wrong. He was very fond of her, but he had no idea how he would even begin to deal with that. She teased him about his unusually warm temperature and his giant appetite. She couldn't imagine. If he were to stop cautiously keeping her at arm's length from him it would mean letting her know there was something more to him, and he didn't know where the hell he would start even if he thought it was a good idea to tell someone like her about those things.

Somehow she already seemed to know that she had to keep herself from getting too involved with him anyway. And it didn't have to have anything to do with what she couldn't imagine he was hiding from her. Maybe she was just able to see the other one that was always in his eyes when he looked at her. For all she acted kind of like a child who couldn't afford to take things too seriously because she'd go crazy, she could be very sharp.

Once after the bar was closed, she and Jacob were idly dancing around behind the counter to a Rolling Stones song playing on the juke box. They started out laughing a little and stumbling clumsily, Lilah failing to avoid his big feet, but then the lyrics about weddings and graves were making his mind fade out and his movement became a little slowed. She looked up at him with a raised brow and asked, "What are you thinking about? You're always getting so quiet like that."

"Sorry," he said with a laugh, bringing himself back into the right tempo, even though it wasn't much of a song to dance to anyway. He swayed lazily with her, hands loosely gripping her waist. They only touched where their hands were, leaving cool air between their bodies.

"It reminds me of my uncle. You know you look really old for your age?"

"Yeah, I never hear that one," he said sarcastically, taking her hand and spinning her around in a rather ungraceful circle as the song was finishing.

She laughed, letting go of his hand and leaning against the counter. "No, I don't just mean because you're so tall," she said. "It's your eyes. You've got this look in your eyes that looks like it belongs to somebody fifty years older than you, somebody who's seen a whole lot. It's like my uncle; he's a veteran. Lived through some _crazy_ shit. And I remember all the time when I used to look at his face, it was like he wasn't even there in that time. I've barely ever heard him speak."

He realized that in her own strange way, she was inviting him to open up to her about some of the things he never told her about. They spent so much time just talking about her. He almost really wished he could, and when she made this observation about him, the words struck him a little deep. It was the first time he ever realized so clearly that nobody like her, nobody else that he ever met in his life, was ever going to be able to understand the things he'd seen and been through.

Maybe the whole imprinting thing that came with being a werewolf didn't seem that weird in light of the fact that it was so difficult and complicated trying to get close to anybody without it. He had reached a point by now where he felt like an outsider with anyone who was normal. He only felt like he truly belonged with others who understood and only felt at home in that frightening, unbelievable world of his kind.

Bella's soft voice in the dark in her bedroom, at night in his garage, knowing and understanding, the relief of finally having and holding her again after she figured out what he so desperately wanted to tell her but couldn't, complete deliverance from the living nightmare it had been the first time he phased, just quiet and peaceful. The yearning was as strong as that to return to a mother's arms when things get too complicated, to be innocent and small again and protected from everything. There would never be a dream more ideal for him, and in comparison to anyone else she was the mourned dead, made perfect and angelic through the loss of her. There was no comparing.

* * *

"When Jasper let me read his mind when he came to see us," Aro began to explain, "I was quite fascinated to finally know how just the seven of you managed to defeat all of those newborns who came to attack you. I knew something about there being some werewolves in this area because of what I had seen in Alice's thoughts already, but my word! A pack of _ten_? I could hardly believe it even as I saw it."

"This makes some werewolves interest you?" Carlisle asked, still confused.

"If you want to put it that way—it makes them _worry_ me. They are no problem for you, perhaps, as you have managed to keep them under control and minding their own business in regards to your coven specifically—which is very strange and interesting in itself, I might add. But for the entire rest of our world, it makes us concerned."

"You think them a danger to _all_ vampires?" Jasper asked with a careful smile. "Isn't that a bit of a dramatic exaggeration?"

"I think whatever strange phenomenon that makes werewolves appear in regions such as this one calculating that ten dogs running around in one place is necessary is a dramatic exaggeration," Aro replied, smiling back. "Can you not see how the situation with them has gotten dreadfully out of hand? The werewolf is an absolutely_ abominable _creation as it is, which because of its very existence threatens the secrecy we always strive to maintain. They seem to only exist because we do. They are so rarely found that it is difficult to know anything about them for sure, but as I know some explain it, they belong to rare lineages of humans that have somehow developed the power to protect themselves from us."

"That seems to be the way the ones here originated," Alice confirmed.

He nodded. "Yes. But that means every time one person turns into a werewolf, our existence becomes known to at least one more person, most likely more. And they can't even be very cautious about keeping it unknown what_ they_ are; they can pop into gigantic wolves without even meaning to if they simply get angry! They're unruly, unreasonable creatures who will attack a vampire who is just passing through their territory and not even hunting. See how they're designed in every way to be the most loathsome nuisance you can imagine?"

He was saying this all in such an alarmingly light tone. Bella almost felt like she was at a dinner table where someone was telling racist jokes and expecting everyone else to find them funny.

"Now, this treaty you have with this pack here," he went on, "has done its job so far. But judging just by what I have seen, it seems to be quite a fragile alliance."

"On the contrary, since we have been able to fight together there is probably more trust between us than ever," Esme said. "And Bella was actually friends with them in her human life."

"In her _human_ life," he echoed with emphasis.

"And still now," Bella spoke up.

"But for how long, my dear girl?" he asked of her. "How many more wolves are there later going to be? They may not all remain loyal to you. And any one of them could decide to turn against you. That is all it would take for you to become enemies with them."

Edward spoke for the first time in a while, sounding impatient and angry. "They have nothing to gain and everything to lose by doing that unless we actually do something that violates the terms of the treaty," he said.

"But you already _have_," he said, and he looked meaningfully back at Bella. Everyone at the table went silent a moment, staring at her as her face finally showed her growing feeling of unease.

"You must see, my friends," Aro went on. "How can it be of any assurance to us that you have this treaty made to protect yourselves from them exposing you if you cannot even stay true to it?"

"We had no choice but to make Bella one of us if we were to follow _your _law," Edward said.

"Exactly. It should be none of their business what you decided to do with her, only ours and your own. But with this treaty, you've made it their business. You've allowed them to take our law into their own hands, the hands of some untrustworthy adolescent humans with abnormal abilities they can barely control."

Bella wanted to protest against what he was saying so much that she was screaming at him in her mind, but a heavy fear had completely overtaken her and she felt like she couldn't even speak.

"Forgive me for having to get involved in what you might think are your affairs, Carlisle," Aro said. "But our laws make me quite unable to ignore and permit something like this. When we become aware of their existence in an area, we do not deal with werewolves by making treaties. We deal with them by…well…_dealing with them_," he finished quite suggestively.

Bella felt completely frozen in place. She was hardly aware of Edward reaching over and taking her hand again, more firmly than before.

"How exactly do you intend to go about doing that?" Esme asked in a weak voice.

"That is just what I've been getting at," he said in his light, almost happy tone that was now starting to sound sickening to Bella. "There are two ways we can do this. One is to go after each of them individually. But that could turn into quite a mess. Sneaking up on a werewolf to attack them is risky, as I'm sure you can imagine. If they change into wolves and it turns into a fight, it can quite undesirably call the attention of other humans; a dog isn't going to care about being seen that way if he's running from a group of vampires for its life or trying to chase them down before they hurt anybody. What would be much more preferable is to give them the chance to meet us as a group. This way they would know that they would at least not endanger their families or anyone else who could get in the way, so I am sure they would rather be given this option."

"But you won't be trying to do anything about those in their families who also know about us?" Edward asked.

"Edward!" Bella gasped, turning to look at him in shock, and he just shook his head quickly with a look at her. But then he was visibly relieved as he heard the answer in Aro's thoughts before he said it.

"No. There must be so many people on that reservation who know about our existence that it would be more trouble than I think it's worth to find out who they all are. We are concerned only with ending the bloodline of the wolves to stop allowing this problem to be perpetuated."

"And what is it you want from us?" Rosalie asked coolly. "To _help_ you?"

The vague but still detectable animosity in her tone made Bella feel an unfamiliar surge of warm feelings for her, even though it may not have been out of consideration for her at all that she didn't like this idea. She was already scared to find out what everyone else in her family was going to think of this, and it took her a little by surprise.

"Yes," Aro said, and added quickly, "but oh, no—not the way you might think. You will not be required to get that involved in this at all. Do not misunderstand. We are here as guests in your home tonight and are _asking _something of you, not making you do anything."

"To arrange it so that you can dispose of them the second way," Edward explained for him darkly. "Because they're so friendly with us."

"Right," he said as if he completely missed Edward's displeased tone. "We couldn't possibly try to talk to them ourselves; they wouldn't trust a thing we say if they even let us say it before trying to rip our heads off. But that way will be the most efficient. And after all, it gives them a chance to be prepared and defend themselves, which I think is more satisfactory for everyone."

"You mean it gives them the idea that they even have a chance," Bella said quietly.

He smiled. "Oh, I assure you, we never bring more than enough with us. Our guard enjoys the challenge of a more even fight too much."

"Aro," Carlisle said quietly, his voice with a layer of nervousness underneath it. "I must ask to speak with the three of you alone, please."


	3. II: cantante

chapter **II** cantante

* * *

They could hear some of the things being said upstairs because even as Marcus, Aro, and Carlisle were trying to keep their voices low, some of them were getting so frustrated trying to reason with each other that they raised them sometimes.

The rest of them were all gathered on the bottom floor in a confounded silence. Bella and Edward sat on the bottom step of the stairs.

"This can't be happening," she said quietly, breaking the prolonged silence at last.

Edward put his arm around her waist. "This will sound awful, but…they_ are _lucky that they won't bother to go after their families, too. When they wouldn't even make an exception for you…"

"_Stop_," she said, shaking her head and covering her face with her hands, hating to even think about it. "Don't say it so easily like that! We can't just let them do this!"

"Bella," Alice said in a low, steadily warning voice. "We will talk about this. But not right now."

She tried to calm down as she continued to sit in silence, looking around at everybody's faces and trying to see what they were thinking. How she wished she had Edward's gift right now. Instead of…

No. No. Not that. She buried her face in her hands again, wanting to just think about nothing, to be able to go into something like sleep again for once. She felt like she was going to explode out of her skin.

Edward held her close against him, but she didn't seem to feel it, was hardly consciously here. All of her was just full of faces and knew nothing else. Sam. Billy. Quil. Emily. Embry.

Jacob.

It was suddenly as easy to picture them as if she had last seen them all yesterday.

* * *

Years ago, when the Cullens were still gone from Forks, Jacob had once brought Bella along to Emily's house when everyone in the pack was coming over there for dinner. Bella had helped Emily wash dishes afterwards and they ended up sitting at the table having their own conversations while the boys talked and laughed loudly in the next room.

At some point, they had started talking about less light topics than before. Bella told her how much it scared her to have Jacob and the others out trying to get Victoria all the time.

"I get worried, too," Emily admitted. "But she's only one. We should be more worried about the people she might end up killing before they finally get a chance at her. One of the boys might get hurt, but it would take a lot for one little vampire to actually kill one of them. All it takes is one little bite for somebody else and they're done for," she said with a dry smirk.

"What would happen if a vampire_ did_ bite a werewolf?" Bella wondered. "Would that hurt them? Do you know if they could actually be turned into a vampire?"

Emily looked thoughtful for a while. "Well…according to what I've been told, _theoretically _one could. Quil's grandfather has actually told me about one of our legends that's about that."

It was not one of the most well-known Quileute legends, she explained, and one that the Elders didn't tend to take as seriously and weren't so quick to believe every word of. A few of the protectors of the past were known to have left their people to become wolves forever because they all had their own stories, but this one, Emily said, was about one like that whose fate was quite different from the others'.

This protector was a young man named Qahla who had always had a terrible lack of control over his feelings. He had a short temper and got into fights a lot. He had a bad reputation for falling in love with women fleetingly and breaking their hearts when he always then found someone else he liked more. Then when he was eighteen he lost his temper having an argument with his father and accidentally killed him when he burst into a wolf. The pain of his guilt was so unbearable for him to carry as a human that he left the tribe and wandered as a wolf, deciding he would never change back. He felt being a wolf was the fate he deserved if he could only cause harm with the feelings and passions of a man.

He went hunting for cold ones, following their scents, for as a wolf it was easier to blame all of his suffering on them and their existence and see it as so simple a problem. One day when the sun was shining, after he had been wandering like this for many months and strayed very far from his home, on his hunt he reached a bright clearing in the forest where a female vampire was standing right in the sunlight and sparkling vibrantly. She had her face turned up toward the sky with her eyes closed, as if she must have been enjoying the warmth of the sun on her on this rare unclouded day. But as she heard and smelled him approach, she opened her eyes and looked toward him.

Something uncanny and unexplainable happened when Qahla saw her, for he knew he should only feel hate for one of the cold ones, but the woman was so breathtakingly beautiful and had such a gentle face that just looking at her made his heart break. He did not want to destroy her. The emotions that filled him just at the sight of her were so overpowering that without being able to control it, he changed back into a man.

The female was just as transfixed staring at him. As she started to come near him with her eyes burning red and a determined look on her face that had suddenly started to look less benign, he realized at once that she wanted his blood. Just before she would have stopped hesitating, though, another female vampire appeared from the trees and got between them with a threatening growl. The two rushed together with a loud crash like the clapping of thunder, the ferocious noises they made echoing through the trees. They were fighting over him. As Qahla saw this it seemed to bring his sense back, and he changed back into a wolf so he could defend himself.

Even though he knew he may not be able to fight two of the cold ones together, instead of running away he went after the second female who had appeared, who he could easily tell was stronger than the other. He could see that if he didn't kill her the beautiful woman was going to die fighting for him, and for some reason he did not understand he could not let this happen.

But as he attacked, they surely thought he meant to hurt both of them and they both fought back. When the first female climbed onto his side, he managed to throw her off of him, but not before she bit him. Then he was able to quickly kill the other.

By then he could feel the venom from the bite starting to spread and burn. He knew that it was going to slowly and painfully kill him as long as he stayed as a wolf because it could not change this body. He looked at the vampire he had found here, into her beautiful eyes that were cautious and alert as she prepared for him to attack her as well, and sunk to the ground in resignation. She came to stand in front of him with a pained look.

"Why did you save me from her?" she demanded.

Of course, he could give no answer.

She kneeled in front of him and said, "Please change back from this form if you can. If you do, I can make your death quick."

Her voice was so strangely kind for belonging to a creature like her. It was what made him able to calm down even with the horrible pain from the bite and change back into a human. But then as she looked at his eyes, she found that she could not bring herself to kill him. And as soon as her venom began to spread through his human body, he had started to become like her and he could no longer turn back into a wolf.

"Is that really what would happen?" Bella asked after Emily told her this part of the story.

She shrugged. "We can assume so,_ if _a wolf was actually bitten. It's a big 'if.' That's why this particular legend is so odd and questionable. A vampire would never actually want to bite a protector—not in _either_ form. Don't think I never worried about that at one point, but Sam tells me he's never once known a vampire to actually reserve to using their teeth in a fight with them. Let's just say werewolves seem to be the opposite of appetizing to them."

Bella nodded. "Then how does it end?"

"Qahla and the other vampire became lovers," Emily said, raising her brow in acknowledgement of how strange it was. "And as an immortal, he never had such fickle and dangerous feelings again and loved one other forever. That's the way it ends. Maybe you can see why the wolves wouldn't accept this legend as true so easily."

Bella looked at her blankly.

She smiled. "Well, besides how unlikely it seems that anyone else ever would have found out what happened to him to make the story get passed down, it almost shows vampires as kind of sympathetic, doesn't it?"

"Sympathetic?" Bella echoed in surprise. "Not really. It shows them as being totally animalistic, not even having real human feelings. The female went right from wanting to drink his blood to wanting to be with him, as if it's the same thing to her! And he didn't care? Vampires don't have some kind of twisted attraction to humans like that, not like in the movies. Or like_ insects_…ones that want to mate with _and_ eat each other. You know, like a praying mantis..."

She laughed. "Aren't they?" she said vaguely, like she couldn't really know.

"Well, come on. I think if she really fell in love with him when he saved her, she would have killed him. He only changed back because he thought she would. It was kind of selfish of her."

"Well, that's where love always gets kind of complicated to think about, isn't it?" she said with a laugh. "But yes, I think it's definitely supposed to be kind of a sad ending. He gets what he deserves in a way."

"It seems like something that was just made up as a fable to teach people a lesson," Bella said. "The guy has kind of a tragic flaw."

Emily shrugged. "But anyway, it's how we have an idea of what would happen in those circumstances. There must be _something_ true and substantial in it."

"What the heck are you ladies talking about in here?" asked Sam, who had just appeared in the kitchen to get some ice.

Jacob followed saying, "Yeah, I thought I heard something about praying mantises."

They both laughed. Bella did not perceive then how her world brightened a little just at having Jacob enter the room; she did not _know _yet.

What she had thought she knew about love then and what she knew now were so different they sometimes seemed like the most significant thing separating the past and present, her two lives.

* * *

Carlisle finally came downstairs with the others looking resigned. He and their guests seemed to have nothing more to say to each other. Before they left, Aro turned to the others and said, "I am sorry it has to be this way. I never realized you all might have so much of an objection to it. But surely it could come to some of you as a relief when this is completely out of your hands and dealt with. Goodnight to you all."

Carlisle was not impolite and did not seem angry, but in no way did he bid them farewell like they were old friends. He and Aro just nodded to each other respectfully before he turned to leave through the door.

"Oh, yes," he said, remembering something and looking back. "And do be sure to let them know they have absolutely no chance if they try to just run away from this. Demetri has been in the area following their awful smell around for two days and managed to find every one of them so he would be able to again."

Carlisle's face changed with a thought and he asked, "Will you be remaining in this area for the time being?"

"No, we do not know exactly where. But far enough away. I assume you would prefer we not hunt here, after all."

"Yes. Thank you, Aro."

Everyone remained silent even a while after they had left, until they were sure to be far away. Then Jasper asked, "What was agreed?"

Carlisle sighed. "They will do it in our baseball field, since he knows exactly where it is. At midnight six days from today…So we better tell them soon."

"Oh my God," Bella said, sounding almost like she would swoon then if she could.

"I'm so sorry, Bella," Esme said, shaking her head. "We understand they mean a lot to you…"

"It's completely hopeless, isn't it?" she said, looking around at all of them. "They're supposed to be completely undefeatable. How can they survive facing_ them?_"

"They could have one advantage," Carlisle said. "The Volturi will not be anticipating that they'll have help."

Some of the faces in the room turned toward him in surprise while others seemed to expect this. Jasper seemed the most shocked.

Carlisle walked over to sit on the floor near where Bella and Edward sat on the stairs. He spoke directly to her. "It was very difficult for me to make this treaty a long time ago. I didn't need to do it. Edward and Esme and I could have fought the only werewolves that were here at the time when we first moved to Forks. We had done nothing to them or harmed anyone, and they hated us. But I did not like the idea of having to kill them. Then more of them could have come, and we never would have been able to avoid having this violent conflict continue between us and their kind. I wanted instead to try to make them understand. And it's true, they can be very difficult. They didn't want to be reasoned with. But I think it was my complete unwillingness to fight them instead of keep having to evade a confrontation with them that made them finally listen to me, though they certainly must have thought for a while that we were just too scared. They have never quite_ trusted_ us, but they've been giving us a chance for about a century now."

"But you blew it with me," Bella said glumly.

He shook his head. "Please do not think that this is happening all because of you. It was always at somewhat of a risk of agitating the Volturi that I kept this kind of arrangement with the wolves. I knew it would amuse as well as disturb Aro to know I had made a kind of deal with them, that he would see it as being dangerously tolerant, and that he might even decide to do something about them.

"The Volturi _hate _werewolves, even more so than the typical vampire. They've lost a couple very valuable members of their guard to them. They're actually quite afraid of them and won't try to deal with them except in large groups, which is why it is a big undertaking for them to decide to get rid of ones they know about. Aro must have been carefully planning how to do this these past few years; I doubt they have ever dealt with such a large number of them before. Considering Alice was not able to give us a warning about this, it seems he did not think of how it could be beneficial to involve us until just today. They seem to think of it as their duty to do all they can to try to eliminate them from the world entirely, but Aro respects and would rather not offend me. I believe he is just glad to have an excuse to attack the pack without me really being able to blame him because the way we broke the treaty by changing you means he can claim _we_ have given him no choice."

"He is," Edward confirmed. "Bella is not a worry on his mind at all. He didn't pull out that card until I tried to point out how his fears are unreasonable."

"This is just a war over territory, really," Alice said. "They don't want the vampires in this area to be in the werewolves' control, as it might as well appear to them, instead of theirs like the rest of the world. Because obviously dogs run things a bit differently," she said with a slight roll of her eyes.

"Can anyone understand if I say that I somewhat prefer their way?" Carlisle said.

Everyone was quiet a moment. Then Rosalie said, "Yes, I can."

Bella nodded. "The wolves protect everyone in this area from vampires," she said. "That includes Charlie, Angela, Mike…everyone I knew here who I would want to be safe. I know we can't keep staying here for much longer at all. But it would make me feel better knowing that they're still here watching over things."

Emmett sighed. "As weak a job I think they do at it, I guess I can understand that."

Edward and Alice snorted, briefly trying to control mild grins.

Carlisle smiled a little. "I know how most of our kind feel about them. But I cannot help but find them a little remarkable. It doesn't make any sense why monsters like us would exist. But they exist for the reason of defending people. If we are so perfectly adapted to be easily effective killing machines, it seems more than fair that a rare handful of humans has had nature—or whatever force it may be—give them ways to fight back. It always comes at a cost for us to live the way we live, staying in one place like our home here for a long time like civilized people of a real family and trying to still fit in with humans to some extent rather than hunt them. Having difficulty handling werewolves because they do not know better than to assume we are dangerous is perhaps just part of that cost. This is why I thought it was important to put aside our prejudices and try to resolve our problems with them peacefully a long time ago. And I am simply not comfortable with the idea of the Volturi going after them just for what they are rather than for anything they have done and killing them in such an organized manner that it's practically genocide."

"But…to defy the _Volturi?_" Jasper said with a little disbelief. "Do you realize how dangerous this is going to be? This is their specialty. This will not even be a battle for them—more like an effortles massacre."

"Yes. That's why we will really need you especially, Jasper." Carlisle's tone was a little beseeching. He looked around at all of them. "I…can only hope I am not asking too much of any of you by deciding this is where I stand."

Jasper seemed to think about it a moment. "Of course I would not have us divided on something like this," he said. "I can understand your feelings. I just worry what it will mean to offend them like this."

"Aro will not take it personally," he promised. "He is so extremely practical. And he sees us as much too useful possible assets to make us real enemies. I predict that if we fight, he'll be reluctant to even have anyone hurt us if they can help it. They could be overconfident enough for him to think he can afford that."

Jasper nodded, but still seemed to show some reluctance on his face.

"Well?" Esme said quietly. "I suppose we need to let them know what is happening as soon as possible."

Many heads in the room turned a little carefully toward Bella. She looked down at the floor away from them and let out a nervous breath of air.

* * *

Edward watched her dial the number, but seemed to feel like he was intruding on something and stepped away to leave her alone once she put the phone to her ear. It was 4:15 in the morning and there was no answer the first time. The second time she called she thought nobody was going pick to up again, but after several rings—

The audible clashing of plastic, someone sloppily picking it up. "Yeah, what?"

It was him, but not the way she liked to remember, sounding tired and a little annoyed. It somehow caught her off guard and made her feel even less capable of opening her mouth and talking to him. How could she do this? But if someone he was quite less friendly with had called instead it just would have caused him to wonder why she couldn't be the one to do it.

_"Hello?"_

"Jacob," she finally said back.

She thought she heard a sudden, fast exhale of air, and then there was a dead silence for a long moment.

Then he murmured, "Christ. Is it you?"

"Sorry. I know this must be…"

"What it _is_ is…really early in the morning," he observed, and seemed to realize this could only mean she was calling because of something bad. She could hear in his voice that he was slowly waking up completely, realizing how real this was. "What's going on? I was actually…well…going to try to call you guys or something because we know some vampire's been around here and thought you might know something about whether or not we should be worried. I mean we definitely _are_, we've been trying to hunt them down, but it seems weird…"

"How do you know?" Bella asked. "Did you _see_ him?"

"So you do know. It's a him, is it? No, we haven't seen him, just been able to tell he was around some of our houses because of the smell. It's like he's really interested in the pack. Paul thinks he must be suicidal to be getting near a bunch of wolves."

"…No. He isn't suicidal."

Another expectant pause of silence. Bella felt like her voice was restrained in her throat. She just wanted to tell him it was nothing, let him go back to sleep and think later she had not really needed to come back into his life and this conversation hadn't happened and her voice in his ear had not been real.

"What do you know?" he asked after she waited so long, starting to sound worried.

She sighed. "We need to meet."

"'We' is…?"

"Everyone. The whole pack."

"The_ whole pack_, right now?" he said in surprise. "I could just tell the others—"

"No, they all need to hear this. It's too important to wait. It's…It's really bad, Jake," she said dismally.

He was quiet again for a second. "Are you okay?"

She could hear how the question was a stranger in his throat. She swallowed, hesitating. "I'll just have to see you soon. Can you get everybody here—at the house, I mean—as soon as you can?"

He thought for a second. "Yeah. It'll probably be in less than a couple hours."

"Okay."

"Bye."

When she flipped her phone shut, she saw that many of the others, including Edward, had left this part of the house. She found Alice's eyes looking right at her.

"They'll be here soon," she said, though she knew they had probably been able to hear everything, and turned to go upstairs. But Alice came over to her and took her hand, leading her into a corner far away from where Jasper, Emmett, and Rosalie were.

She whispered right into Bella's ear, talking quickly and so quietly the words could only be heard by her. "I've seen what you're able to do."

Bella's eyes widened fearfully, and she pulled away from her, shaking her head. "Please, Alice…"

"It's important." She took her arm to stop her from walking away from her.

"That's silly. You can't have seen something like that…"

"I haven't seen you _use_ it, since you may only have by accident and maybe without even knowing it, but I can see it if someone will have the potential for something like that in them. It's like being able to tell how a growing person will look in a year; not much is going to change that. I've seen it since right before you were turned, when it was final that it was going to happen and we knew when. It's been well over three years. I know you must have started to discover it by now. Don't you see how useful—?"

"Yes, I do see how useful it could be," she said a little darkly.

"Why are you just trying to hide it?"

Bella crossed her arms and stared down at the floor nervously. "I don't like it."

Alice sighed, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Well, I'm afraid whether you like it or not, we're going in a fight up against a pretty terrifying force, and we're going to need all the advantages that are available to us. Please think about that. But Bella…" She tightened her grip on her shoulder and looked at her seriously. "It's good that you haven't told anyone. It's better that they don't know what they're up against. _Don't _let anyone else know. It's bad enough that I do, and I'm sure glad I decided it wasn't my business to say anything before."

And she turned and left her alone. Bella just stood there a long time, terror taking over her in a much more paralyzing way than before now that she had a moment to herself just to think about all of this.

There were things she had told herself she would never do, things that it scared her just to know she_ could_ do. But she had never imagined they would find themselves in this kind of a situation. To make all of this be over a lot more easily…to keep some of the people she cared about from getting killed…she wasn't sure there was anything she wasn't willing to do. And this possibly terrified her more than anything.

The sound of Jacob's voice on the phone, heard again for the first time since she was still human, remained scratching in her head distractingly—a sound once comforting that now only filled her with anxiety about too many things. He never should have had to see her again at all. He should have been able to move on and forget about her. He certainly should not have had to defend himself from a deadly enemy with her and possibly die.

For her. No matter what Carlisle had said, she could not stop thinking that.

* * *

"Why is everyone so quiet?" Bella demanded as she was sitting on the stairs again later. The silence all over the house was driving her a little crazy. Emmett and Alice just looked at her with some feeble smiles.

Edward walked over to her and took her hand. "Come on," he said, pulling her onto her feet. "I haven't played you anything in a while. Let me play your song."

She didn't know if she really wanted to hear her lullaby right now, at a time when she wouldn't be able to appreciate it. Everything was supposed to be perfect and right when she heard that song. But she went with him to the piano and stood leaning against it as he sat down, saying nothing to stop him.

They had only the screen door at the front of the house closed, so the thick heat of summer could be felt breathing on them through the mouth of the front doorway. There was a light breeze rustling all of the trees outside, carrying in the scent of leaves and dirt, and as Edward started playing the melody that was so familiar to her, the delicate and precise pressing of the keys blended with the sounds from outside.

Then Bella caught a new, foreign scent coming from far away outside, an immediate disturbance that perplexed her so much her attention was taken right away from listening to the music. At almost the very same time, Edward hit a chord that resounded sourly, some of the notes coming out sounding more like metal things dropped on a kitchen floor than the soft and perfectly tuned tones they were supposed to be. As she stared forward toward the door, the sound made Bella jump in surprise, her shoulders stiffening, and she looked down at Edward as he frowned and his brow creased together in confusion.

Emmett was laughing lightly. "Hell. Something's wrong with that piano."

Edward unmusically hit several notes again until he found the problem: two keys in the lower register that weren't playing right. He pounded out the two distorted notes together again and again, with different amounts of force, trying to hear what was wrong with them.

"I swear_ I _didn't touch the thing," Alice said, and Emmett laughed again.

Bella had already forgotten about what Edward was doing again; as he got up and walked around her to lift up the top of the piano, he did not notice how all of her attention seemed to be on something far away. She started walking slowly toward the door, looking out of it and watching closely for any movement besides the breeze tossing the trees.

When Edward looked inside the piano, he immediately saw what was causing the problem and gave a light laugh. "Oh, I don't believe it…Bella. Look."

He looked up and found her with her back to him, not even seeming to have heard him.

Now Emmett had joined Edward by the piano to see inside for himself. He started laughing as much as ever. "Ha! Look at_ that!_ And she thought she'd lost it!"

It was Bella's bracelet. Somehow it had fallen into the piano after she left it on top of it and was now caught over two of the strings. As Emmett leaned over to take it out, Edward just stared at her.

"Bella?" he called again.

This time she heard him and spun around to look at him, but she did not seem the least bit interested in what he'd just found as Emmett handed the bracelet to him, or to have taken notice of it at all. "Can you see that they're here?" she asked. "Who else is with them?"

Now everyone started to look at her strangely. Edward was silent a moment, looking like he was concentrating on something as if listening for a sound in the distance, and then he slowly shook his head. "I don't know what you mean," he said. "They haven't brought anyone else with them."

"But can't you smell the one?" she asked, and she started to step back away from the door as if she were afraid of what was going to come through it soon. "One of them smells different…not like a_ wolf_, I mean…"

The others seemed to be trying to see what she was talking about for a moment, and then looked at her just as confused as ever.

"They all smell normally disgusting to me from here," Alice confirmed with a shrug.

"There couldn't be anyone else with them," Edward said. "They phased to come over here, of course. That's why they are taking so long to come inside."

Bella slowly shook her head in bewilderment. "That's so…strange," she said in a vague, barely conscious tone, like she was partially just talking to herself. Then she looked around the room and seemed to realize at last that her whole family was now gathered around here and looking at her very curiously. She awkwardly looked down at the floor and walked back toward where she had been standing before by the piano.

They were here. She heard them coming up the steps of the porch and talking to each other as they came to the door, but she did not look around at them. Edward was standing before her, looking only straight at her face.

He held out his hand toward her. She looked down and found he was holding her bracelet. Slowly, like she wasn't completely sure what she should be doing at the moment, she reached out and took it. "Thank you," she murmured.

It had only been misplaced for several days, but it was strange to hold it again after thinking it was gone forever; she lost herself running her thumb over the tiny and amazingly detailed carved wolf, forgetting for a while what was happening right now.

"Okay, you've got us here," said a very familiar voice behind her, sounding a little gruff and guarded. "Now that you have us all plenty worried, who wants to explain what's going on?"

She woke up with a hard slam. She turned around, her eyes wide. He had just come to stand within about ten feet of her—just close enough to be too close.

Everything pulling, pulling her irresistibly into death. If it can be imagined, two massive constructions of magnetically attracted material, two trucks unlucky enough to drive near enough to each other, so many tons of metal, flying together with the angry force of a thunderstorm and crashing with a godlike scream of inevitability and useless destruction. Nothing to be done. All the sudden it seemed practically impossible not to just let the dark curtain of her instincts drop over her sensible mind and take over her entire body, to let go of herself.

Jasper noticed the intense and easily perceptible change in her mood right away, but he did not seem able to understand it. "Bella?" he said quietly, looking at her. "What's the matter?"

Jacob had been looking forward—looking at anyone but her, as it seemed. For as soon as everyone else's attention turned to her, his eyes moved directly to her like he knew exactly where she was standing but had been avoiding acknowledging the very spot where she stood. Immediately his expression seemed to soften just a little, looking more vulnerable and completely taken aback—a little worried, maybe—because of the look he then saw on her face.

"It's you," she said in a whispering gasp as she realized it, stepping back away from him a little as if he frightened her. Everyone was looking at her with confusion. "That's…That's_ impossible!_"

Edward looked extremely frustrated to have no understanding of what was bothering her. He took her arm and said quietly to her, "Bella, _what_ is impossible? Are you alright?"

"Oh—" It came out like a moan as she leaned over a little as if she felt like she was going to be sick, covering her mouth and nose with her hand. She understood then with horrific clarity and at the same time found it a ridiculous joke that some described it with a phrase like _la tua cantante_. It was not so much like something was singing to her as screaming at her, a disturbingly high-pitched, constant sawing sound in her brain blocking out everything else, absolutely impossible to ignore.

It was too much to handle. She could barely even make sense of what was being said to her or think about anything else but how much she_ wanted _to…

She just looked to the side at Edward for a second, her eyes still large with shock, and then glanced in the direction of all the others and muttered, "Excuse me."

Within four seconds she was up the stairs and out of sight.

Everyone stared after her, still looking at the staircase with confused expressions.

"Okay," Leah said with a short laugh.

"I suppose Bella will not be joining us, but listening from upstairs," Carlisle said slowly and awkwardly. He shot Edward a questioning look and right away he also left the group to follow her.

"Let us get right to the point," Carlisle said. "I'm afraid you are all in a very unfortunate situation. What do you already know about the Volturi?"

Edward heard many of the werewolves respond with alarmed remarks at finding out this had something to do with them. He stopped listening once he had gone into his and Bella's room and shut the door behind him.

She was sitting with her legs curled up against her, hugging her arms around them as she rocked back and forth just a little as if she was too anxious to sit still. He could hear her still breathing a little quickly.

He went and crouched in front of her. "What in the world is wrong?" he asked, reaching out and smoothing his hand through her hair. "You are _scaring_ me."

She looked up at him and shook her head frantically. "I don't know how this can be," she said. "It doesn't make any sense!"

"What doesn't? Does this…?" He seemed uncomfortable to complete the question. "Does this have something to do with Jacob? Why did you leave?"

"Because I was going to hurt him if I didn't," she said in a rush of blurted words. She said it as if it made her sickeningly ashamed.

He shook his head slowly, not understanding. "Why? Surely you can't mean…"

"Yes, _bite _him. I know!" Her eyes rolled around the room and she looked half-mad for a moment.

"You…were having a hard time trying not to…_attack_ him?" he asked.

"Harder than_ hard_."

For a brief instant, he could not help but look a little disgusted. "But_ he_ is a—!"

"Apparently this makes some kind of an exception to that," she interrupted quickly, hating to have to try to explain it. "Do you understand? Edward, it's never been this hard before. Not even right after you turned me."

His face looked as if it became more relaxed, but it was more like the understanding he finally had shocked him so much that it completely detached him from having any kind of immediate reaction. There was suddenly too much happening to be able to respond to all of it adequately.

"You…think he's your…?" He talked so quietly it was barely audible.

Looking away from him, she took a long moment to respond, but then gave the smallest nod.

She never saw the look on his face after she confirmed this. As she was still looking away, he reached over to her right hand that had been balled into a fist for so long as she fought against herself with so much determination downstairs and was still clenched tight a little. Gently, he tried to pry her hand open. "You're going to break this," he warned quietly.

In this hand she was still holding her bracelet that had just been returned to her. She seemed to notice this with some alarm, opening her palm and looking down at it, blinking a little. She would not meet Edward's eyes before he stood up and left the room.


	4. III: consequences

chapter **III** consequences

* * *

By the time Edward was back downstairs, there were already a lot of voices getting raised in anger and panic.

"How can we even trust what you're telling us? Being able to deliver us to your bloodsucker police force actually sounds like a pretty agreeable deal for you."

"Yeah! How do we know we aren't just walking into a trap? Having to fight a lot more of them than would be able to attack us out in the open so they can clean us out a lot easier."

"And why is it up to you to decide how we're going to deal with this anyway?"

"Paul! Leah!" Jacob agitatedly spoke up in a voice louder than anybody else, sounding close to losing his temper, addressing the ones who had started getting everyone riled up. His face was mutilated with stress; there was nothing young and smooth about its features at the moment. "You're not helping things. Be quiet."

Jacob was the only one standing very close to the Cullens, in the gap between the end of the room where they were grouped and the other where the pack was. Standing almost right in front of him was Carlisle.

"I have to say," Jacob said, "I can understand why they would question this. Why exactly are you so willing to help us? It sounds like the Volturi are really not the kind of vampires you want to mess with. And aren't you violating some law yourselves by trying to stop them?"

"Getting in their way is definitely not advisable for anyone," Carlisle confirmed with a regretful look. "But it's probably much less of a risk for us to fight them than for many others. I am somewhat old friends with Aro, the one who usually speaks for all of them," he admitted with some uncertain hesitation, and Jacob lifted an eyebrow in response to this. "As you can guess, we have always had many differences in opinion. He will see all of this as just a sport. As much as they can justify this attack with their law to keep our existence secret, that is really all it is. Dog killing. I have no doubt that it will take Aro by surprise that we choose to fight with you because having any sympathy for your kind, just like for any humans, is something he simply does not understand. He will surely try to make me come to my senses and talk me out of it because he would rather not have my family fighting against his forces. But ultimately, there is only one rule they require all of us to follow, and that does not even include not killing one of them. With a terrible lack of a better way to put it, our kind live in a dog-eat-dog world."

Some of the others laughed bitterly.

"So sorry this is going to cost you your friendship," Jacob said sarcastically.

Carlisle shrugged. "Aro is more the ambitious type who values useful connections with people, not friendship and loyalty. He _thinks_ he has more to gain by staying friendly with me than not."

"Why is that?" he asked.

"Because several members of this family are so exceptionally gifted. That is just the kind of thing the Volturi are always looking for in people. They are so lethal because Aro, Marcus, and Caius have spent a very long time looking for the most talented and powerful vampires to have join them. And that is why I suspect they would order their fighters to defend themselves from us but try to be a little careful about dealing with us when we stand in their way. As we will explain to you, there are vampires among them with ways of incapacitating but not harming us if they needed to take advantage of that. But don't worry. _We_ will not be going easy on them."

Edward had come to stand near his father's side. "Perhaps it can be said that we owe it to all of you for helping us so cooperatively when those newborns came here. And if you still are not convinced that it isn't that great a sacrifice for us to offer you help," he said more quietly, "remember that one very good reason for my family and I to care about stopping them from doing this is upstairs right now."

Jacob seemed to turn to look at Edward with some reluctance. "Right," he said with sarcasm. "Because it looks _very_ convincing that she apparently isn't even willing to be part of this meeting. If she hadn't been the one to call and arrange this little party, that would look awfully suspicious. Does she even include herself in this?"

"Of course she does," Edward responded with some anger.

He looked away from him, starting to look more passive. "In that case, maybe I'd rather this was just some trick she wouldn't be a part of." He spoke so quietly that nobody behind him could hear.

"You think_ I'm_ happy about it?" Edward shot back, some deep distress showing in his voice which he had been containing before now.

Jacob looked at him for a long, silent moment, clearly bothered. "What's going on?" he demanded in a low voice. "Why'd she leave like that?"

Carlisle turned to look at him, his eyes joining those of several others who really wanted to know the same. Edward sighed and just answered, "It's not anything you think."

Jacob groaned and rolled his eyes, not enjoying the reminder that Edward really could see everything he was thinking. Deciding to get back to more pressing matters, he turned to Carlisle and spoke loud enough for everyone to hear again. "Okay," he said. "Let's imagine that with the help of all of you, we _could _actually defeat however many of these leech cops show up to try to exterminate us filthy dogs. But then what? There's plenty more of them where they're coming from, right?"

"That, I'm afraid, is not clear," Carlisle said unsurely. "I don't know what the highest number of them is that the Volturi will be willing to risk losing before they decide it isn't worth it and just give up. To be honest, this could turn into quite a mess—an extensive war rather than just one battle. But there will have to be a point at which this will start to seem like too much trouble for them. In time I'm sure they will discover other problems elsewhere that are more dire for them to attend to than this one. Even very soon, after Aro sees we are willing to risk ourselves to stop them from getting rid of some werewolves we have made a treaty with, he could decide for the sake of convenience that perhaps their law does not so explicitly prohibit such a thing. Making exceptions for anyone is not their way at all, but having quite flexible interpretations of the rules sometimes is…The newest addition to my family might never have lived to become that if it weren't for some leniency she was showed when first introduced to them because of Aro's particular interest in her potential," he added a little gravely.

In reaction to this, several of the Quileutes gave each other surprised looks and murmured to each other. Jacob just kept staring forward and swallowed, frozen still.

"You said they'll be coming at midnight on Saturday?" he asked.

Carlisle nodded.

Jacob looked around aimlessly at the room on the Cullens' side. "I need—I mean…Could I please use a phone?"

It earned him some strange looks that he was asking them, and being sure to be polite about it. But none of his own friends could have carried anything with them but the minimal amount of clothes, of course; they were all barefoot and wearing just pants except Leah, who had on only some skimpy shorts and a wife beater. Edward, still standing closest to Jacob, took his cell phone out of his pocket and held it out for him with a blank expression, and Jacob took it without looking him in the eye.

Knowing because of his thoughts he heard who he was going to call, Edward could not help but watch him a little curiously out of the corner of his eye as he dialed the number a little unsurely and hesitantly. After he put it to his ear, many others were also still paying attention to him, and they must have been expecting him to be calling Billy or someone else who would be waiting to find out what this was all about, because there were some visible reactions of surprise when they heard him start talking in a casual and light tone.

"Hey!" he said after someone answered. "Oh good, I did get your number right. Yeah, it's Jake. Listen. Uh. How would you like to cover for me at work this weekend?…Oh, come on. _Please?_…Yes, it's really important…"

Behind him, Quil and Embry both snorted quietly in a display of slight immaturity, seeming to know who he must be talking to and being in on some joke. It was quite easy to tell just from their reactions that it was a female.

As everyone started dividing into having their own personal conversations, Edward looked up toward the part of his bedroom door on the floor above that could be seen from here. Behind him, even as Jacob was talking on the phone and trying to sound like everything was fine, his eyes focused close on Edward as he did this.

Alice and Esme did not let the moment waste long before coming over to Edward and bombarding him with their own questions.

"What's wrong with her?" Esme said quietly.

"Should I go talk to her?" Alice asked.

"I…I don't know," Edward said unsurely to her.

"Why, is she mad about something?"

"Alright. Sure, sure," Jacob was saying with a stiff laugh, about to finish up his conversation on the phone. "And I'm still picking you up tomorrow, right?…Okay. _Thanks, _Lilah. I owe you one…Yeah, that's true, you do kind of already owe me your life," he said teasingly. "Uh-huh, you too. See you." He let out a relieved breath when he could finally flip the phone shut, going right back to acting much less at ease.

"No, she's not mad," Edward answered Alice as Jacob went right to his side. "She just…may not want to have to explain right now."

"Hey, let me use that, too," Collin said as Jacob held out the phone to give it back to Edward, coming up and snatching it quickly out of his hand.

"Well," Jacob said to Edward, crossing his arms now that his hands were empty, "_you're_ going to explain now that we have a moment…If you please," he added reluctantly.

Edward let out a long sigh and then looked directly at him. It seemed to practically cause him pain to have to explain it. "Does it mean anything to you if I say that it seems _you_ are Bella's 'singer?'"

Alice's jaw dropped; Esme's eyes widened. Jacob just kept looking at him, blinking, and shrugged. "No," he said. "What the heck is that, some bloodsucker slang word?"

"Actually, that's exactly what it is," he said with a dark laugh, "at least among our kind in Italian-speaking regions. That is what they call what Bella was to me when she was human."

He looked as lost as ever, still struggling to understand. Esme and Alice exchanged a look and went away to talk to the others, as if realizing this was actually a sort of private discussion for them to be listening to.

Edward sighed again. "Vampires all eventually develop different tastes in the kind of blood that smells the best to them, once they have been around long enough to start recognizing the differences in the way humans taste. Bella has actually reached that stage much, much sooner than is normal, but I still never imagined something like this would be possible right now, if ever. You see, sometimes there will be a certain human whose blood is particularly irresistible to one of us, just the right…_flavor_ or whatever you want to think of it as."

"Right," Jacob said. "I knew about _something_ like that."

Edward nodded slowly. "The first time I got close enough to Bella for her to attract me this way, it was practically a miracle she survived," he continued, waiting for it to sink in. "And I am not exaggerating just to brag about the strength of my self-control."

Jacob's eyes were starting to go large, daunted. It seemed he could hardly imagine it himself, but he was starting to understand.

"And it seems you might be pretty lucky to be here right now yourself," Edward said, sounding very disturbed. "Do you see what I am trying to tell you?"

He kept appearing to be in a state of overwhelming disbelief for a few more seconds, but then he just raised his brow in a more carelessly astonished expression, and looked back at Edward's face. "Well," he said lightly with a bit of a smirk, giving a short laugh. "_That's_ inconvenient, isn't it?"

Edward just stared for a moment, and then sighed in agitation; Jacob could only be finding this the least bit funny because he could tell how much it bothered him.

"You can laugh all you want," Edward said. "It's your funeral."

"It looks like I have plenty other things to worry about killing me first," he said.

"That is exactly why something like this could not have happened at a worse time, you moron," Edward said severely. "There is no way she can be even close to ready to be around you by the time we have to do this. She has to be concentrating on making sure she doesn't get killed, not making sure she doesn't kill _you_. Even _I_ will be distracted having to worry about looking out for her that much more."

Jacob shrugged. "Then I guess she better stay plenty far away from me. Or…maybe she shouldn't come at all." His eyes brightened at the idea.

"You better know that sounds like an excellent plan to me, too. She has never had to do something like this before and I hate it. But of course there is no way she would agree to it."

He nodded. "Yeah. She wouldn't."

"And my family goes into fights together or not at all," Edward added. He glanced briefly over at Jasper where he, Alice, and Emmett were talking quietly with a vaguely disturbed look. Then, with a different thought, he looked back at Jacob. "I might not have expected that you would still be so concerned about what happens to her."

He seemed to have meant it as almost some kind of expression of gratitude, but the slight surprise in his voice made Jacob's face harden into near fury, even though he just maybe was surprising himself a little, too. Not this. _He _was not going to bring this up. It was not for him to blame or judge Jacob whether he cared or didn't care if she died—if it can even be called that when someone's life isn't even really life to lose anymore. He could not have any idea how much harder it might be to accept that she was still alive, that she still had more to lose, after he had started living with the idea that she was not.

"Go to hell. Really," Jacob said, a tired and useless attempt against someone who could see right into his head and had access to all of his weaknesses anyway. Then he turned away from him.

Maybe Edward felt bad for saying anything. A little. "I don't think I can," he muttered to himself after he had walked away.

With that, he had seen it: Jacob Black had not taken it well. He had to admit that he didn't really know how anyone could learn to accept a loss like that. Instead of making him sympathize very much, the thought frustrated him. As long as Jacob still had to hurt like this, it seemed like he should at least be able to feel like he had won in some way.

But truthfully, he didn't. Nobody had really won. Everyone had still paid somehow. Between the three of them, he knew their pain and their happiness was all still connected in a chain that could not be cut at any point on its whole length no matter how much the opposite ends pulled hatefully from each other. Because of this, none of them were completely happy. It seemed that just when they felt like things were fine, everything else they thought they were past was always going to come back to haunt them.

Emmett had only been kidding about it, but maybe part of her really did want to get rid of that bracelet, to forget. It was no use. It would always turn up again, interrupting the perfect and happy melody.

* * *

They arranged a time for everyone to meet at the house again to start talking about what kind of strategy they would have to use against the Volturi. Soon they would have to start practicing fighting somewhere outside, but for at least one more meeting they thought it might be important that everyone be in a form that allowed them to talk.

It was now well into the morning and the Cullens were scattered all over the house. As Rosalie got ready to take a bath, she lifted up her hair to let Emmett undo the clasp on her necklace for her and said conversationally, "Wanting so much to bite a _dog. _Ugh. I can't imagine…"

Emmett shrugged and said, "I suppose stranger things have happened."

"_What_ stranger things?" she asked doubtfully.

Bella heard everything through the wall from where she was sitting with Edward in their room. There were never any secrets in this family. Even when she had been human, she had never felt so alienated in this house before.

She had been almost completely silent ever since everyone left, as if she was in a state of shock. It filled her with so much horror to know what almost could have happened earlier today that it was almost as bad as if it really had happened.

She tried not to think about it too much. Her mind stayed back away from it to protect itself, like someone not getting too close to touching something hot that would burn. Nothing had happened. It was all right. Still she hovered dangerously close to the heat and could not help but think,_ But what if…?_

She had almost killed him. She hadn't been ready for this at all, and she knew she really could have. And then...Then what? There could only be blackness and nothing after it if she did something like that. It would destroy all of her and everything so she would never even know what had happened. That had to be how it would be because she could not put herself in the circumstances, imagine having to swallow all that, enough to decide how she could possibly live with it. It just could not ever happen.

All of her and everything suddenly nothing. She had never been able to think that anything could ever happen that would be bad enough to make even having Edward mean nothing and not be enough. But this…She did not know. She could not touch it. It could not happen.

All along, Edward was being just about as quiet as her. This bothered her as much as anything. She knew he wasn't, but it felt almost like he was mad at her.

"What do you think this could possibly mean?" she asked quietly beside him, needing to finally say something. "It's just insane. Why_ him?_"

"I don't know," he answered in a very deliberately even tone. "I am not sure that it _means _anything."

She was unwillingly setting a trap too easy for him to step his foot into; if this meant nothing, then _their _unique kind of bond perhaps had always meant less than they thought it did.

Just seeing the way his face looked was making her feel so guilty, even if there was no sense in that. It was like she had made the mistake of falling in love with somebody else all over again. She leaned her head in close against him, fitting it into the crook of his neck as he leaned his head against hers, and took his hand.

"I know you don't really want to hear this," she said. "But please promise me something. Don't ever let me hurt him."

"Isn't it a little late to do anything to prevent that?" he said before he could think twice.

She went coldly silent.

"I'm sorry," he amended right away. "That was not funny. Of course I already swore to do all I can to make sure you never make any mistakes, and that includes keeping you from harming him."

Bella would not look at his face. "So are there any new juicy scandals among the wolf pack you can tell me about from what you saw when they were all phased?"

"Nothing like what was happening before," he said, sounding almost disappointed. "But there is one pretty important thing I didn't have to read their collective mind to know about, because Sam Uley was worrying about it almost the whole time."

"What's that?"

He turned his head and looked down at her face. "Emily is four months pregnant."

She closed her eyes a moment, sighing again. "My God," she whispered.

"You think so optimistically," he observed sarcastically, but he spoke in a bit of a dark tone; he could not be sure that things weren't completely hopeless himself.

"Edward, they_ can't _find out about that!" she said, panic rising in her voice as she realized something horrible. "You know what Aro said. Their intention is to kill off the_ bloodline. _If Sam leaves behind a baby, there's still a direct descendant of—"

"Yes, I know," he said seriously. "I was thinking that might be reason to be worried. Everything is so much harder to be sure we can keep from Aro with that collective mind of theirs and mine that might as well be part of it. Perhaps we should advise Sam to have Emily go away to hide somewhere else until this is all over with, somewhere she will not even tell _him_ the location of."

"You don't think Demetri would be able to find her?"

He shook his head. "I don't think so. I feel I have a pretty good understanding of how his power works from being around him and reading his thoughts. Unless he took note of it when he might have been near her, the particular sense of her mind would not mean much to him. They do not think they have any reason to be interested in the people connected to the pack in any way, so I doubt he paid enough attention to her to be able to find her again. And if they do not even know that she is pregnant, I think we can assume he probably did not end up seeing her at all when he was searching La Push."

This made Bella feel a little better, and she went quiet. There was a long silence that slowly filled with some discomfort as they both knew who he was not going to tell her any other news about until she asked to know.

"How much could you hear while you were up here?" Edward asked.

"Everything," she answered. "Unless there was a bunch of whispering going on I didn't know about."

He hesitated before prompting her, trying to guess what she wanted to ask but wouldn't. "Do you want to know who he was talking to on the phone?"

It had not been far from her mind, but now it was right in the middle of it. "I could barely make out her voice…Was she somebody important?" she asked, maybe hopefully. Maybe. It was hard for him to tell.

He had to think about that first, but eventually he just answered, "No. She isn't really important. Not like that."

"What do you mean?" For some reason, she wanted him to explain it clearly in his own way, even though she thought she could already tell as much about how Jacob really felt about this woman just from the way she had heard him talking to her on the phone—that he liked her a lot, certainly cared about her, maybe could easily love her if it was a completely different world, but had to pretend so much with her it could be exhausting. Perhaps she wanted to hear from Edward that these things she had been able to guess were wrong.

He was quiet a moment again before he just said what was germinating the silence with so much tension. "He's still in love with you."

She sighed softly. "How do you know? Or how does _he_, I mean. He hardly even got to see me."

Edward's face became hard and stony. "You're still the same person," he said, his voice full of conflicted anger, as if he couldn't decide if he would be relieved or just feel like killing Jacob if he really stopped caring about Bella just because of that.

After a while that they said nothing more, she loosened herself from him and stood up from the couch, heading for the door.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

She turned back around to look at him, seeming to wish he wasn't making her say it. "I need to go hunt," she explained.

He nodded. Of course. It would be necessary in the coming days that she not be hungry.

"Let me go with you," he said.

She shook her head. "It's okay. I think I want to stop by Charlie's for a while, too."

If it weren't for the kind of time they were in now, he might have gently said something like "You just did not long ago." There was really no point in her going over and watching her father the way she did, paying him her own kind of "visits." It made him worry sometimes that she was unable to completely let go of the things from her former life, that she was starting to regret that she had to give it all up the way Rosalie made no secret she did.

But after all, this could be her last chance to see his face for all they knew.


	5. IV: adagio in minor

chapter **IV** adagio in minor

* * *

Everyone in the pack was disturbingly quiet after they all changed back and got themselves dressed again in the dark. There had been a lot to see in each other's minds after they left the Cullens'.

Jacob went back with Sam to his house. Emily was waiting in the rocking chair on their porch when they got there and Sam told her tiredly, "Em, you should be sleeping" as she got up and stepped right into his arms.

"Don't be ridiculous," she said. Then she looked at Jacob and said, "I was hoping you'd come over, Jake. I've got some coffee ready…"

They went inside and Jacob sat at the kitchen table with them mostly in silence, sometimes staring at but not touching a cup of coffee in front of him as Emily had to hear the whole terrifying explanation. Her belly was a shallow bulge underneath her gauzy yellow blouse. Usually it could be awkward having to avoid staring at her gruesomely scarred face, but right now as he looked at her he could not help but have his eyes drawn right to that growing stomach. It felt like she might as well be holding a bomb in there.

Emily got tears welled up in her eyes in fear, asking all sorts of questions he and Sam didn't even know the answer to yet. This would be happening all over La Push this morning and there was no end, no consolation. He knew Billy had been waiting at the Clearwaters' with Sue; they would both be finding out everything from Seth and Leah this very moment.

Even watching Sam try to comfort his wife as he told her what they were going to have to go into, Jacob was glad in a way to be focusing primarily on all this. He was glad to be distracted sitting here with those he thought of as a brother and sister rather than alone with himself and the other things that stung just as much as the gripping fear of not coming back from this battle to see this family anymore.

But it was all there in Sam's and Emily's eyes anyway. They did not say anything about it or try to make him talk about it, but Emily eventually slid her chair around to sit close to him and soothingly rubbed his back for a moment, knowing and seeing it. He must have really been a mess, he thought, for her to be looking at him like that. He didn't know.

"You'll be alright," she promised softly. She said that to him a lot.

It was too easy to just let himself go at the moment, and he could feel his throat tightening just a little, his hard exterior about to crack. He didn't know. When he had let the words "I'd rather see you dead" slip out he had meant it and he hadn't meant it. It was not as bad as he had expected, worse than he had expected. He would be alright, he would be alright, as mothers promise. The days and the years would come back, time and the sun meaning something again, and he would start to change and grow older again, he would heal, even if it was hard to believe it now. She would stay exactly the same.

They all knew, of course, that it was the first time he had seen her since _before_. He had always known he would not want to see her again if he didn't have to. He'd imagined it would be like having a time you argued with somebody as your last memory of them instead of a nice one. It was easier just to tell himself she was gone rather than cling to some piece of her that was still left out there.

But her eyes, still hers even with their completely wrong, inky black color and yet not hers. Her voice and her face, the same but different. This was the girl whose hand he had held while she got stitches at the hospital, whose blood he had later had to wash out of his shirt he'd given her to hold against the wound, who he had pulled out of the blackness of the deep water and ordered not begged _BREATHE _because she just had to, she had to. And he used to think that it just wasn't right. How could something that meant so impossibly much to him be so fragile, so easily damaged or almost lost, kept in this world only in such a weak and vulnerable body? He could remember how small she was to hold in his arms, across his lap, much too small for everything she was to him. He did not have to be an invincible immortal himself to wonder about what kind of sense this made.

Now she was nothing of that, her body turned into a hurtful weapon, all killing instinct rather than struggling survival, every breath not even needed and meaning nothing.

He could not tell himself she was gone anymore. It was something different from that and maybe, in some ways, harder to accept. Trying to swallow a hard rock that just won't go down.

* * *

Once a little before she had turned eighteen, Bella had been at the Cullens' house looking at all the pictures on the wall in Carlisle's office as Edward searched for a book in there. Her eyes stopped on one particular picture when she noticed it for the first time: a small, framed art print. It was a dark, shadowy painting of a succubus perched over a sleeping young man in his bed, looking down on him like a hawk circling a helpless mouse. The creature was bizarrely beautiful with her cruel, menacing face, naked and pale and inhuman.

"Edward?" she asked. "What's this?"

She jumped a little in alarm when his face was suddenly right by her shoulder, following her gaze to what she was looking at. "Ah," he said with a laugh, smiling. "You found Irina. Kind of tasteless, isn't it?"

She looked at him with a cocked eyebrow. "Irina?"

"The three sisters of Tanya's coven are most likely the ones who started the human myths of succubi," he explained. "They used to have this hanging in their home because they think it's funny how much the one in this painting happens to look remarkably like Irina. The last time we visited them there they gave it to Emmett after he found it to be so amusing."

"He did..." She felt like she was missing something.

Edward smiled. "Well, he thinks those girls are very silly, you see. As you've probably come to understand a little by now, it's quite the exception rather than the norm for a vampire to have any kind of a sexual or romantic attachment to their food, to put it in a way that is like how most of us would think of it. Forgive me, but the way the movies show relationships between vampires and humans is honestly kind of hilarious to us. But that is how Tanya, Kate, and Irina kept getting close enough to humans they did not actually kill to start those kind of stories; they all developed quite a fondness for human men. That was the reason they decided to change their diets."

He put his arm around her waist, leaned over and kissed her cheek. "But their liking for humans is, of course, not even comparable to my exclusive attraction to you," he added. "I'm quite the freak among my kind, rather than simply an exception."

She laughed lightly. "Is it really so unthinkable for you to sympathize with humans? It's what you all once were, after all."

He shrugged. "I don't know. It seems people can get used to any way of thinking to the point that they'll never question it, even if it would bother someone else. It sort of makes you wonder if all of morality is just completely subjective."

She followed him out of the office saying, "All of it can't be. You could never make_ me_ accept the idea that it's okay to be killing people."

"Even if a burning bush told you it is?" he asked, looking back at her with a teasing grin.

"If a burning bush was talking to me, I would probably check myself into a mental institution. Or else assume that it wasn't actually a communication from God but some evil force trying to trick me."

"Well, there you are." He held the door to his room open, letting her go in first. "If you evaluate every situation like that, the only thing determining what you believe is really right is yourself. And if that's how it is for everybody, it means they can believe anything they want that may be completely different from anyone else's ideas. Do you not find that a little depressing?"

"Yeah, unless we all have an inherent nature that tells us what is good, even if some people just go against it."

"Yes. I tend to hope so." He took her hand and led her to the couch, where they sat down close together at one end. "Aren't you glad I haven't lost _my_ gut instinct for what is the good thing to do?"

"I guess I better be," she said, giggling. "How did we get to talking about this?"

"From Irina," he said with a smirk. "I could repeat our whole conversation from memory if you like, but I think you mean that as a rhetorical question."

"Yes, that's not necessary. Show-off."

And he had laughed and circled his arm around her, leaning down to kiss her.

* * *

Bella did not go to Charlie's house after she hunted. She drove to Port Angeles and sat in a crowded café with a copy of_ A Midsummer Night's Dream_ she had no intention of actually reading and a steaming cup of coffee that would sit by her until it got cold.

It had first started a little over a year ago. Alice had dragged her along to a mall a long way out of town to go shopping with her, and while they were briefly separated, Bella had been unlucky enough to cross paths with Mrs. Newton, who just happened to be there with a friend. She had been trying to find a top she liked in her size and then looked up to see her staring curiously at her from the other end of the store.

In a slight panic, Bella had turned away and tried to keep a moderate pace as she left the store, thinking desperately, _Please don't think I'm me, think I look a lot like me, think I must be somebody younger who's related to me…_

When she risked a subtle glance back at her, Mrs. Newton was casually talking to the friend with her and seemed to have forgotten what she saw.

Bella had found Alice in the shoe store where she'd left her and pulled her into a corner to whisper, "We need to leave. Mike's mom is here."

"Oh _no_," she said. "Please tell me she didn't notice you!"

"Considering she didn't have a heart attack from seeing me risen from the dead, I don't think she got a good look, but she definitely noticed me."

Alice had ended up stealing a pair of shoes that day because they rushed right out of that mall without taking the time for her to change from the ones she was trying on.

After that, there had been more similar incidences, too many for her not to start wondering if she was not just getting lucky every time. It was mostly just small, inconsequential things that happened too easily. She once saw that Alice and Rosalie were close to getting into some of their occasional sibling bickering and hoped that one of them would just worry about _anything _other than what they were doing to bother each other, and then Rosalie had suddenly seemed to remember she had a lot of things to do in the study even though Emmett looked a little puzzled when she said something about this and went upstairs. Then one afternoon when she and Edward were sitting and reading in a park after going to their morning classes, she had seen a little boy run out into the street in front of them and gasped as a car headed for him, but the driver had slowed and stopped in time to avoid the boy with what looked like an impossibly fast reaction.

Edward had been even more astounded by this than her, saying in a bewildered voice, "How strange. He did not even notice the child until he had already started braking. Unless his thoughts now are somehow unreliable."

That was when she had first started to feel a little scared. But she did not let it show.

"Huh," she said. "Maybe he's just so in shock and it happened so fast he can't remember it right. Almost hitting a kid like that would leave me pretty disoriented."

"Yes. Or perhaps he just skipped his medication today and has no idea what's going on," he said, making her laugh. "I know too well how confusing it is to try to listen to someone's thoughts when _that _happens."

It wasn't exactly that she did not want him to know. She did not want to think of it herself at all. She wanted to forget about it and believe that there was another explanation.

If she could save a child's life on accident, on an unconscious impulse, that was one thing. But for her to develop any kind of control over this, to try to use it on purpose…That was something else. The idea of being that powerful was daunting and somewhat terrifying to her. What if letting this talent grow would just make it more out of control? Edward did not even have the ability to completely tune out what he could hear, no matter how wrong it might seem when looking at it in a certain way for him to be in everyone's heads uninvited all the time. Could having this strange power that she did not even fully understand mean that she could practically use and control people like puppets? She did not necessarily have to believe in a God to feel that doing something like that would be playing God.

Somehow, it made her feel ashamed. The special talents that some vampires had apparently reflected certain strengths they had as humans. This was supposed to have something to do with the kind of person she was. She could not help but think that it must have been some kind of a less admirable trait of hers that had been amplified when she became immortal to make her have this power rather than something anyone ever would have considered a strength or good quality.

But all those feelings did not mean much to her anymore. Not now.

She sat holding her book open, looking around the café at all of the people in there. When she was human, she knew she could be practically invisible sitting alone in a setting like this, the quiet and harmless book worm keeping to herself so much that nobody notices her. She sort of wished it was still like that so that she did not have to put on such a convincing show of not paying attention to anyone else, but her appearance called much more attention to itself now and she occasionally caught someone at a next table with their eyes on her.

It didn't matter. Nobody could possibly suspect…

Her, she decided, looking over at a teenaged girl who appeared to be working on math homework and had a cup of coffee with her. She might as well start simple.

Bella thought, _I want you to take a drink of coffee._

The girl kept punching some numbers in her calculator, and then wrote something down. She didn't touch her cup.

Bella looked back down at the pages of her book for a moment, thinking, and then looked back up at the girl. She concentrated on picturing her picking up the cup and raising it to her mouth. She imagined pushing her arm up as if she could control some invisible force. She tried to get just one of her fingers to move at all by doing this. Nothing happened.

She gave up on her and searched the room with her eyes, stopping them on a middle-aged man reading a newspaper.

_Stand up,_ she thought clearly, as if ordering him with her mind, trying to put a lot of force into the thought. He didn't move, and she thought hopelessly,_ Please stand up? _

But nothing she tried was any more effective on him. She sighed, looking back at the teenage girl, who only just now was remembering her coffee and taking a sip of it.

_Thanks, _she thought dryly. She looked at a clock on the wall, sighing again like she was already exhausted from trying. It was starting to get late and nobody but Alice would have any idea where she was when she was gone for so long. She was going to have to speed like crazy on the way home.

One more try. She decided that was the most she could do for now. Maybe she needed to take some time to think about what the key to doing this right was before she just kept trying the wrong way to make it work.

As she expected this time when she tried to make one of the cashiers scratch his nose, she had no luck again. Resigned, she closed her book and stood up to leave.

* * *

Nobody chose to ask her why she had been gone so much longer than she ever left the house. Later in the evening, Jasper came to the doorway of her and Edward's room and said, "Excuse me. Bella, do you have much of a skill with drawing?"

"Drawing?" she echoed, surprised. "No, not really. I hardly ever draw anything..."

Edward looked at her with a raised eyebrow. "But you're really not bad," he contradicted, seeming surprised that she would be oblivious to this. "I've seen you draw something fairly good a few times."

She rolled her eyes and gave a short laugh. "Yeah, doodling in class."

"Well, it sounds like out of this whole household you're the only one with even a little artistic potential," Jasper said. "Well, I mean, Alice—she's pretty good, but cannot really make things look _realistic_..." He shrugged. "What I am trying to ask is if you think you could try to do some drawings of the members of the Volturi you have met as you remember them. It would be very instrumental to have when I explain to the pack what they need to be ready for. Only the ones who we need to worry about the most because of their special talents. Demetri will not matter."

Her mouth dropped open a little. "I could_ try_..."

"I would appreciate it."

Edward smirked at him. "The skills you need to win a fight really aren't all brawn, are they?"

Even if she wasn't very confident about how well she'd be able to do it, Bella was glad to have something useful she could do to help during the time there wasn't anything else to occupy herself with except worrying. She immediately got to work on doing several simple portraits on large paper. She did not really think about how well she was doing it but just did it, and it seemed to come much more naturally than drawing something ever had before. Aro and Marcus were the easiest because she had seen their faces the most, not just in person but in the painting in Carlisle's office. Then she did the best she could to draw a good likeness to Alec and Jane, the only other ones she had met who Edward told her would be the greatest dangers.

Once she was done taping them up on the back glass wall on the bottom floor a couple hours before they were to have their meeting here, Edward came up behind her and looked across the row at all of them, looking impressed but taking a moment to say anything.

"You're really quite good, you know," he said finally, looking down at her.

She could actually admit to herself as she looked at all her work up on the window that he was right. They looked much better than she could have expected. She'd never thought she was a particularly good artist before, but she had also always assumed she couldn't be and never tried much. Perhaps, like Edward's musical talent, it was a skill that had become augmented to the extreme when she became like him.

He reached over and took her hand. "What do you think?" he asked. "Now that you're not hungry at all, could you join us down here this time?"

She frowned to be reminded of it. "I'm certainly going to try," she said, looking down at the floor with a glum face. "…You were right. It _is _a lot harder than I ever could have imagined. More than you ever could have been able to describe."

He put a finger under her chin to tilt her face back up toward his. "Don't worry," he said with a small, encouraging smile. "I do not think you will hurt him."

She shook her head in doubt. "But no matter what I had you promise me, I know it's not like you can be watching me like I'm a child _all _the time. We're going to have a million other things to be worrying about. I don't know…if I can go into this…and be sure…" Her voice trailed off into silence, like the idea scared her too much for her to talk about it.

"I have more confidence in you," Edward said simply.

She just kept shaking her head in disbelief. "Do you think I have more strength for this than _you?_ Even you say it still amazes you that you didn't just get me the first chance you had."

"But it was quite different for me, wasn't it?"

"How?"

"Well…when I first had to fight that urge, you were nothing more than a stranger to me. A very_ lovely _stranger, but nonetheless..."

Bella snorted and hit his chest teasingly.

He smirked at her before continuing. "But you and Jacob know each other," he said. "You already care so much for him. When you have something that much more important to think about, it becomes a lot easier. And in any case, when you are in the middle of a ravaging battle and need to be the most concerned with protecting your own life, I am quite sure _that _will distract you from how appetizing he smells, rather than it being the other way around."

She shrugged. "I hope so."

Edward looked to the side at the glass wall, considering something as he glanced out at the yard. "Come sit outside with me," he said, taking her hand again.

As they walked out together, he looked up at the darkening sky. "Alice has seen that we should be getting a couple sunny days later this week," he said.

"Great," Bella said flatly as they each took a seat on the edge of the porch. "If only I could be as optimistic about something besides the weather."

He squeezed her hand tightly but did not speak. He didn't seem to have anything confident to say on some other subjects.

Whenever Bella thought about them having to face the Volturi, she kept hearing in her head the things Alice had said to Jacob about them once._ "You're right, dog. The Volturi are the very essence of our kind—they're the reason your hair stands on end when you smell me. They are the dread behind your instincts, the substance of your nightmares."_

Desperate to fight off the momentary terror, she looked back at Edward and tried to smile convincingly. "At least I don't have to ask you to stay behind with me this time."

Even though her tone was half-joking, he looked a little stricken. He turned his face away from her eyes. "Don't say that," he said uncomfortably. "This is exactly the kind of thing I didn't want for you."

As she realized what he was saying she frowned, also looking away from him, her hand loosening a little in his. "Well, there's no use in having regrets now, is there?" she muttered.

He shook his head, turning back to her with his face looking a little apologetic. "I was only saying..." He sighed. "You just have no idea how brutal this is going to be. And you...It is not as if you've ever even killed anyone before."

"And I never will kill anyone who doesn't probably deserve it."

He closed his eyes a moment, shaking his head again. "I don't know…With the ways I have tried to justify certain actions of mine before and how it made me feel after a while…I don't know if I can believe that things are that simple, so black and white."

She looked off in the distance at the last of the sunset for a while, wondering if he was right. She thought of how she had been trying to master her powers earlier, and it gave her a sudden sick feeling deep inside. But there was no getting out of it.

The thought reminded her of something that had been looming in her mind. "Jasper isn't alright with fighting the Volturi," she guessed.

Edward looked at her somberly. "No. He isn't. He identifies with vampires like them much more easily than most of the rest of us can. He has a lot of respect for them and what they do."

"It makes me feel absolutely awful."

"Alice is the one who should feel guilty about it, if anyone. It is for her that he is going against his own nature by doing this, not you. It is unfortunate, but…it is still only by his choice that he'll go with us."

She shook her head. "I'm sure it doesn't really feel like that. I did not feel like I could have possibly done anything else but made you stay with me when Victoria's army came. I would have gone crazy otherwise, waiting to find out if you were okay."

"…Yes," he admitted after seeming to think about it a moment. "You're right. It isn't much of a free choice."

After a while Bella had another thought and asked him, "What about Carlisle? I know it isn't like he'll be fighting his old friends face-to-face, but I was surprised he so easily decided we should help."

Edward shook his head as if it was a somewhat elusive concept for him to understand, too. "You know how Carlisle is," he said. "More than anything, he is always an amazingly compassionate person. He knows it would be a little hypocritical of him to be so determined to never hurt a human being and live the kind of life he does as a doctor because it makes it easier for him to live with what he is and then just be all right with this happening, when this _is _our responsibility in a way whether we want to look at it like that or not. Even I can see that he is right, though without this personally affecting me and others who I care about I admit I might never have had the kind of perspective to care. This is not about enforcing the law of our kind. It is about hate, and it really is quite disturbing. To you it must be plain disgusting. When it comes to a situation like this, your remarkable amount of compassion outweighs even Carlisle's."

She rolled her eyes at the exaggeration. "It's not like I have any reason to dislike werewolves. If I was a truly saintly person I would be going around the world and risking my life trying to defend tons of innocent people from being slaughtered by vampires whether they mean anything to me personally or not. The kind of compassion I have for the pack is just…_selfish,_ sort of."

He smiled vaguely. "I don't know if I can think of it that way."

"You can never think of me in a bad way," she teased with a tone of slight annoyance.

His smile then was wide and genuine. "I know. I will try to work on that if you really want me to."

"Do," she said, her smile mirroring his. Then she was quiet in thought for a few seconds and went on, "I just don't understand. How did Carlisle actually _live_ with people like that for so long? I know that for a while they were the only kind of understanding peers he could have, and he always preferred to be part of some kind of family. But…he is such a completely_ good_ person. I went to Volterra myself, and it was like I had stepped into hell on earth. I just cannot picture him there with those people."

He gave a quiet sigh, looking like he was struggling to think of a right way to explain what he thought of it. "They are not evil in their own eyes," he said.

She snorted. "Anyone can be good in their _own _eyes," she said.

"Is there anyone else's judgment who you really have to go by? I mean besides God's, if you believe in all that. Some of the most despicable people in the world are those who never even give any thought to whether they are doing the right thing or not. The ones who figure, 'How can I not be good? Everybody likes me.' But it is not as if the Volturi do not even live by any kind of code themselves. They do actually follow the same laws they so rigorously enforce, after all, not abuse their positions of power. Unless you might see what they are doing to the wolves as that, in which case you can at least feel every bit as justified in trying to stop it."

Bella shook her head like this was all too much to think about right now. "It's just hard to see them that way…It seems too_ easy _to live the way they do. It tends to be people who worry more about doing the right thing that have it pretty hard."

"Yes…But I think it is easy to sometimes take for granted how fitting it really is that we sometimes like to call ourselves 'vegetarians.' It doesn't have anything to do with it being the only right kind of life, and that is why Carlisle has never judged Aro, Caius, and Marcus. The way he sees it, it is simply the right kind of life for _us_."

She knew he was certainly not trying to make her feel any worse about what was to come, if it was possible for him to, but as she stared out at the yard thinking about all that, it all felt like a suddenly heavy burden. Maybe if she had stayed human then the Volturi never would have gone this far, and even if it would have meant having some entirely different problems to deal with, she might never have gone through with it if she could have known. But as things were, it was too late to think twice about anything. She could not let this happen without trying to stop it, whether it would have a devastating cost or not.


	6. V: bête noire

chapter **V **bête noire

* * *

Edward stood with Bella far from everyone else near the front door as the other fifteen were all randomly gathered near the back glass window. Jasper stood facing everyone else as he explained what they needed to know about the vampires in Bella's portraits, on which he had now written an estimated height for each one along with their hair colors just for good measure, and what they could expect in a battle with them.

"Marcus and Aro," Jasper said, pointing to the drawings hung up in the middle of the row, "along with Caius, who we do not have pictured, are the three oldest of the Volturi. They will only be there commanding, not fighting, but it is still important to know what they can do. If Aro touches you, it allows him to read not just the thoughts you are having at the moment like Edward can all the time, but every thought you have ever had. He will know everything you know. We need to be careful about this because there are certain things that may be more helpful to us if the Volturi do not find out about them."

Bella thought she saw him glance over at Alice, and she wondered if she had ambiguously clued him in about something to let him know how important that was. Practically confirming the suspicion, Alice then looked behind her just a moment and met eyes with her. As if to make the action look more casual, she just waved at Bella with a dry smile as if to express pity for her having to stand back there.

"So if you can help it, try not to even let him near you," Jasper said. "You never know how he might be able to use things he finds out against us. And know that any information you trust someone in this room with may not be completely safe."

When Alice had turned back around, Bella found Edward's eyes on her, looking confused.

"She has been doing this a lot lately," he whispered.

"What?" Bella asked.

"Trying to keep_ something_ from me by not thinking about it in my presence. Right now she is reciting in her head how much of the number pi she knows for memory. She's on something like the eightieth digit."

She did not trust herself to be very convincing about pretending this surprised her, so instead of saying anything in response Bella just looked back at Jasper as he kept talking as if she was trying to keep paying close attention.

"Then there is Marcus, whose talent I am afraid we cannot do much to avoid having used against us," he went on. "He can sense the relationships between people. He will know who among us each of you is the closest to. He will be able to tell which of you has authority over the others, who is in love, who do not get along so well, who your brother or sister is, who your best friend is. He will be able to see who you might be the most protective of in battle. He will know that if…What is your name?" he stopped to ask, pointing at one of the werewolves.

"Jared," he answered.

"Marcus will know which ones of you are the most likely to come right to help Jared if he gets in trouble, and who might even leave someone else who could also use some help in order to do that. He can tell whose death would weaken your ability to keep being careful about defending yourself. Yes, you need to think about all this," he said as he was met with several disturbed expressions. "The Volturi might be counting on you to react irrationally and dangerously to things like that. Do not go running to fight three vampires by yourself no matter how mad as hell they might have deliberately made you."

For a moment, Bella thought she could see that even as he spoke almost coldly about how everyone would have to be careful to control their emotional reactions, he seemed to be struggling to keep himself so composed as he talked about this.

Her eyes moved, not at all for the first time this night, to where Jacob was standing on the far left side of the cluster of people that was the whole pack. The strong compulsion to attack him was certainly not as intense now that she had just hunted. She probably could have handled standing even closer to him than this, and it was mostly for the sake of it being less unpleasant for her to be around him that she was standing back here rather than for his safety. In a slightly shameful way, she hoped he did not realize this.

Earlier, she had thought to ask Edward how exactly he had reacted to finding out why she was behaving so strangely around him. "It came as quite a surprise to him—as to everyone," he'd explained. "But he did not seem to think much of it." This he had added in a sort of degrading tone, as if it showed Jacob's ignorance and made him very stupid and careless for not taking it more seriously.

As she looked at him now, she could not help but think,_ Well, he _is _stupid._

But this was only followed by a disconcerting realization as she thought of who she was standing next to. So was she.

_"It doesn't matter!" _She could hear Edward almost mockingly repeating the words she had said when he drove her home from Port Angeles and the truth came out, his voice full of complete disbelief at how easily she could accept it. As he was always trying to explain to her how the smell of her blood made him crazy, in the weirdest way, it used to almost make her feel flattered even though this was definitely not his intention.

Such a bad idea, but it never felt like it was anyone's idea. An impasse. He had tried not to love her, while all along she only ever thought,_ Please, love me._

Stupid. It was almost funny to think about now.

At least it was some consolation to remember that despite everything and all the risks they took she was still here now. He had never given into that temptation. It was not hopeless. However…

Her head darkened with a further realization. However, he_ had _ended up biting her, in the end. Even after all the time he was so determined to never let that happen. She had never thought of it this way before, as losing, almost. But she could imagine that was how it would seem to some others.

She looked over at Jacob again, who was turned inward toward everyone else so that she could see his face. It hurt her a little to look at him. Even though he had not aged a day since she last saw him before being turned, something about him looked so different. There was nothing left of that easygoing, youthful look he used to have when just seeing him smile in that way of his she could still remember clearly could make all of her pain subside for the time being. He still had his hair grown long, and she could not help but wonder why if it made him have such an unneeded excess of fur when he phased.

She had always thought he looked better that way. Maybe somebody else would think so, too. Somebody who could mean more to him than that girl on the phone. Maybe he might still imprint on someone some day.

She wondered if she really wanted that for him or just for herself, so she could stop feeling so horrible because she was unable to do anything to make him stop being unhappy. For if she actually tried to picture it in her head, imagine who in the world would be good enough for him, she found she did not want to think about Jacob with anybody else at all. Just the thought momentarily weakened her with a dull, distant jab of pain. She supposed she could not help it, that there was no getting over it. No matter how happy she would ever be with what she had, part of her was always going to feel like that. Part of her still wanted a claim on him somehow.

But whatever it took to make it better, she could live with it. Anything to take that heaviness from his face…

She clenched her left hand into a loose fist, having to get a grip on herself for a moment as it felt like some fragment of herself was leaping right out of her body toward him, so eager to do nothing but take him. He was standing right there within reach and she had to remind herself to tell her body to stay right here. Letting her mind wander so much seemed to have lessened the strength of the barrier she held in her mind to keep the monster instincts from spilling right out and filling her.

But as she kept breathing steadily, his scent so potent to her in the air that it made the unpleasant stink of all the other werewolves easy to ignore, she was not finding it too hard to keep from thinking about how easy it would be to get to him before anyone could stop her with him standing so close. Maybe she had not actually been losing her control over the urge to bite him for a moment. Maybe she just wanted to touch him. She wanted her arms around him to be able to make him stop looking miserable as they used to be able to do. She wanted more than that, she was ashamed to realize. But for being right there, he now could not seem more out of reach. Everything was different now. She never would have thought it could ever seem more possible for her to kill him than kiss him.

She crossed her arms as if to restrain herself. How could she be thinking like this? It had been so much easier when she didn't know that she loved him—when she had taken it for granted that she _couldn't _think of him that way. As if he suddenly felt her looking at him, Jacob slowly turned his head just a little and glanced in her direction. The second he met eyes with her she turned her face down to look at the floor. But she thought she could tell he was still looking at her for a few seconds. He had not been with her nearly enough to be used to the way she looked. It must have been something so strange to see that in a morbid way it was hard to look away once he started staring. She wondered if he would ever be able to just get used to it.

Not that there was any reason he should. After this…if they got out of this alive…she was sure she would just be gone from his life again. That was still for the best, now more than ever. And yet for some reason it was a little jarring to realize this. Saddening.

Jasper had started to explain Jane's powers, and Jacob said something for the first time in a while as he squinted to peer at the drawing of her. "Geez," he said. "Shortie."

Some of the others laughed a little as they also noted the height written below Jane's face.

"Yes," Jasper said, nodding. "Alec and Jane are twins. They're only eleven or twelve years old. Physically, that is."

Surprised murmurs filled the room. Bella heard someone whisper, "What the_ fuck…_" When she looked to her side, she saw Edward rolling his eyes in slight annoyance.

"Sorry," Sam said to Jasper as everyone quieted down. "Continue."

"As I was saying, Jane's talent cannot truly_ harm _you, but it can allow her to very easily keep you from defending yourself," he went on. "It is a power that works on the mind and makes you feel excruciating pain all over your body. But even if it is only real to you, this kind of torture is enough to render you completely helpless. Therefore, it is very important nobody has to face Jane alone. She does have the disadvantage that she can only inflict this pain on one person at a time, and it takes some measure of concentration to do it. And then we have the advantage that Bella is with us. She will have to be concentrating specifically on Jane to try to keep her from going after anyone else because she is the only one capable of fighting her without help."

Several people gave each other questioning looks. Jacob looked back at her again for a second and then asked, "Why Bella?"

"Ah. Bella is invulnerable to Jane's power," Jasper explained, seeming surprised that what made Bella unique was unknown to them when he was so used to the idea. "Other vampires' talents that manipulate or invade the mind in any way have no effect on her. Aro and Edward cannot see into her head at all."

"Is that some special talent?" Embry asked. "We didn't know she had anything like that…"

"No, not exactly," he said, shaking his head. "It was the same even when she was still human. We do not really know how." Jasper briskly took a couple steps to the left to stand right in front of the last portrait. "Now," he said seriously. "Alec."

Edward crossed his arms tightly like he was suddenly nervous. Bella started listening intently; she had been told that Alec was one of the most invaluable members of the Volturi guard, but she did not know just what he could do yet.

"We should not be surprised if we hardly ever even see Alec," Jasper said. "At least you may not see him until you are in trouble. Apparently in battle he will often watch from far off, circling the area very fast, until he sees a good opportunity to sneak up right behind someone and strike. And I mean_ very_ fast. Alec can move at a speed so great that nobody will see him. He is able to do this so quietly even my ears will not hear him coming. Because of his small size he perhaps would be somewhat easy for some of us to fight without this ability, as he relies on surprising you. In fact, he will be much more dangerous to us than to all of you"—he looked at the pack—"because if he can sneak up behind me and get his teeth into me, it may not take much more to finish me off, but he won't bite you. Remember how I said last time that what you need to worry the most about is not letting one get their arms around you. Well, at least Alec has some pretty small arms to work with in comparison to the vampires you are used to fighting.

"Alice and Edward will need to be focusing on going after Alec. Even though he is so fast, hopefully because they can always be a step ahead of him and know what he is thinking about doing, this will help them be able to get in his way. This is why I must stress how important it is to try as hard as you can not to let us all get separated too much. We want to keep this battle in as small and enclosed an area as possible. That way either Edward or Alice has a better chance of being able to get to you before he does."

"Are you sure he wouldn't get desperate enough that he'd just be willing to take a bite out of me?" Seth asked. "Their whole point in coming here is to take care of_ us, _after all."

"Yes. But they'll want to have fun doing it, too," Jasper said with a slight smirk. "Believe me. If I had to bite you I am sure it would taste so bad it would probably have a negative effect on my concentration and performance in a fight rather than help me kill you. And even if I just barely punctured one of you with my teeth, you would still be strong enough to come after me for a while so it would be quite useless."

"Do other vampires actually taste that much better?" Leah asked, as if she felt offended.

"Oh, yes. Especially if they're full of a lot of fresh blood." The light smirk on his face grew; he was clearly just trying to mess with them a little, and Bella giggled softly.

Seth made a gagging sound and Jared said, "Ugh. You want me to be sick?"

Now several people in the room, vampires and werewolves alike, were laughing a little, including Jacob. It felt a little strange, but after all, some relief from the intensity of thinking about all of this so seriously was pleasant. Jasper certainly always knew what he was doing with people's emotions.

"Say, is anyone else ever going to lecture us on battle strategy besides you?" Quil asked him.

"Don't like my teaching methods?" Jasper said lightly, gesturing to the pictures. "I cannot take credit for doing these drawings, by the way. If your life is saved because you are able to recognize and stay away from Jane, you have Bella to thank."

Emmett put two fingers in his mouth and whistled to cheer for her. Then came some more giggling and lazy, brief applause from a couple people as everyone glanced behind them at her. She just rolled her eyes, feeling ridiculous.

"To answer your question," Carlisle called to Quil, "Jasper has actually seen the way the Volturi attack groups from watching them do it from far away, quite a long time ago. And he is the best for planning what kind of strategy we will have to use to engage specific kinds of enemies because he has been in this kind of situation practically an innumerable amount of times."

"What kind of situation? Fighting with wolves?"

Carlisle answered, "Warfare in general. And he is doing you a great favor."

It might have sounded to them like he was unnecessarily rubbing it in, but the complete truth of the statement resounded in Bella's mind.

As Jasper went on to briefly explain how many other vampires from the guard they could expect to show up and a few other things they should look out for, Edward turned to look at her. "We should tell Jacob about how Emily Uley could be at risk," he reminded.

The momentary comfort she had fallen into tightened into the same uncertainty she had been in most of the day. She looked over at him briefly, and then back at Edward, opening her mouth but hesitating…and then closing it.

"Or…_I_ could just speak with him," Edward offered awkwardly.

Bella's eyes widened just a little. _God,_ no. That would be even worse. It would look like she _really _didn't want to have to talk to him.

She thought a moment. "Why don't we just tell Sam?" she said.

He shrugged. "Alright. If you wish."

Sam seemed to carefully avoid looking at her too much as they spoke, explaining their concerns about Emily and their baby. He talked to them politely, but with no warmth at all, as if this was some kind of formal setting. Bella supposed that was the most she could hope for.

As he was talking, Edward suddenly took Bella's hand a little firmly, and even though the action did not seem to show any fear, she understood why; Jacob had come to stand close enough to hear what they were talking about, and without seeing him she knew from how much more noticeable his scent suddenly was. She was glad Edward just took her hand rather than holding her arm or her waist, which might call his attention to how careful he needed to be to watch her.

There was something so mortifying about it. Nothing like this ever could have come between them when they were both human. She didn't want to talk to him when she couldn't even do it without Edward also being right there. His reaction when Edward explained it to him had apparently been mild, but she was going a little crazy not knowing what he _really _thought of all this, and at the same time was scared to know.

"I will definitely be talking to Emily about this," Sam said. "Thank you for letting me know. I never would have realized how that might put her in danger."

"Do you think Emily will be willing to leave?" Bella asked, unable to help but let all of her fear for them show. "Even when you have to stay here and…?"

He shook his head, appearing to lose his composure for a moment. Then he looked at her face and he was very different from before, regarding her familiarly. "I don't know. She'll understand that it's necessary. But it'll be really difficult."

"It doesn't seem right that you should be separated while something like this is happening," she said, shaking her head. "I know. But just remember—and tell her—that she and the baby are safest the farther she is away from you. As we said, Demetri will be able to hunt you down no matter what, but Edward can see just how he does that and he's confident that Emily is safe from him."

"But just in case, Bella and I have kept this between ourselves," Edward said. "So there's less of a chance of Aro finding out if he ever feels the need to try to touch any of us."

Sam just nodded solemnly.

Bella could hardly imagine how this would be for both of them. Sam having to say goodbye to his wife—his soul mate, his other half—not knowing if it would be the last time he ever even saw her, and not even able to know where she would be hiding. Emily having to go far away from home at a time when this was where she would feel like she most needed to be, where she would know right away what happened to everyone after the night they were all dreading, and just having to wait for any word from her husband while completely alone and having to be afraid she and their baby would stay that way—alone.

She looked around and saw Jacob standing to the side of her on her left, the sad look on his face seeming to reflect these same worries. He found himself meeting eyes with her, caught off guard to notice her looking his way, but neither of them looked right away this time. As they held each other's gazes for a moment, just sharing silent feelings, everything was completely different just for that brief time, the rest of the room disappearing. He was not looking at Bella Cullen then, not at the pale-faced and dangerously beautiful monster with eyes of a warm golden color who was a stranger to him, but just at her. At Bell.

And then came that pulling sensation again, the dull ache of never having that was almost so easy to ignore among all the powerful craving for his blood that it seemed to just blend in and become a part of it. But she recognized it more easily for what it was this time and looked away from him, feeling a burn of guilt.

Everyone had started talking in small groups, the vampires and werewolves completely separated, and they were obviously out of things that needed to be said to everyone for now. Carlisle went and spoke briefly to Jacob and Sam, letting them know when his family would be in the clearing every night the rest of the week if anyone from the pack wanted to come and see what they could learn from watching them practice engaging each other again.

When Bella went upstairs as they were getting ready to leave without a last word to anyone, Edward's eyes followed her with a look of slight puzzlement. When he looked back away, he noticed Jacob standing still and staring up toward the stairs as well with a much darker expression. When he started to turn away and found Edward looking at him, he met eyes with him only a brief moment before he finished turning around to leave. But Edward went to him before he got far in a quick movement, stopping him by standing partially in his way.

"What is it?" he demanded in a low, frustrated voice. "What's the matter with her?"

Jacob only looked completely taken aback to be asked this, though in an instant his face changed to a more taunting expression. "Gee, I bet you really can't stand that you need to ask _me_ what's on your wife's mind," he said.

"Why won't she talk to you? Why won't she even look at you?"

He looked a little wounded for a second to acknowledge it, but then just shrugged. "Maybe she doesn't want to talk to me. Or maybe she thinks _I _don't want her to."

"And why would that be? Did you say something that could have upset her?"

"_What?_ How could I have when she hasn't been—?"

"I mean when you talked to her on the phone."

He looked at him a long moment, eyes burning. "No. Okay? You really think I'm going to...? You act almost like there's some reason I should be mad at her."

Edward started to answer, "Of course not, but I—" His face changed as he seemed to register something from Jacob's words. Perhaps he understood now.

There was, after all, something they had not bothered to tell the wolves about the Volturi's motivations. Something Bella took more seriously than the rest of them and probably would not have let go unmentioned if she had been present during their first meeting, but which was too late to admit to now unless she wanted to make the rest of her family look untrustworthy by comparison.

Edward shook his head quickly and said, "Never mind," leaving Jacob alone before he could notice that he seemed to be hiding something.

As soon as the pack was gone, Emmett sighed. "I need to hunt," he announced. "Anybody coming?"

Most of the others were also hungry and agreed to join him, and then Edward said with some hesitation, "Yes, I suppose. Bella will not need to, but perhaps she might come anyway…"

They were speaking loudly enough for her to hear from upstairs, and he heard her call, "Go ahead, Edward. I'll just stay."

For a few seconds, he could not help but imagine her sitting in their room alone and thinking of a certain face. For those seconds it did not matter if it wasn't fair, if nothing was Jacob's fault, if he had not really been dealing with this by treating her with the kind of bitterness he had been imagining, if he was doing nothing to make this harder for her; he hated him, wanted him erased. Not to go away, but to have never been there in the first place.

And as he tried very hard not to think these thoughts as he left with the others, he realized the irony of it. For he was the one who created Jacob Black, who wrote him into the story. He was his mistake that he made the moment he left Bella alone in the forest years ago with nothing but echoes of him to hold onto. But now, no matter how much he wanted it, he could not make him disappear again.

* * *

She knew she shouldn't be here. She could only hope no one would find out.

Jacob's window was open and Bella crept inside his room as silent as air. He was sound asleep, his legs stretched out long so his feet went over the end of the bed a little. When she crouched on the bed next to him, her added weight on the mattress did not even make enough movement to disturb him. She just stayed perched over him, sitting next to his warmth and looking down at his calm face, having to make an effort every single second she remained this close to him to resist the way she felt so drawn to him. It was not something she would be able to do when there were any great distractions around her, anything else she needed to be thinking about or paying close attention to.

This was how she was going to get used to it. She couldn't let this be too much of a disturbance when the time came that they had to fight beside each other. She didn't even know how much she would be able to desensitize herself to his scent in such a short time; after she and Edward met, it had been months before he had spent enough time around her to have much confidence in his ability to be close to her without putting her in serious danger. But maybe he was right that this should be a little easier for her than it was for him. After once thinking he had lost her, it had suddenly become remarkably easy for him to be more comfortable around her. She had already lost Jacob in one way, and now the possibility of losing him in another way was looming over her like a dark, building storm cloud. She could hardly bear to acknowledge it, denying the inevitable, that the rain and thunder would come.

As she had feared when she had the idea of coming over here while the others were still gone hunting, just sitting here with him in his room made her suddenly have nothing to do but confront certain thoughts she had been avoiding letting her mind settle on. Watching him like this made it impossible not to fully realize how completely different it was being around him than before.

She knew she was still in love with him. This she had known before she ever even saw him again; it was not anything she had ever expected to just fade away. But she had never wanted him like this before. When her family and the pack met it made her disturbingly nervous because she did not want Edward to know, but what was the most disturbing was that he did already know; he knew _exactly _what it was like. When he was close, everything in her universe gravitated toward the spot where he was and she forgot about everything else but him. Her husband practically vanished beside her.

And at the same time, his presence was distracting in a completely different way, because of everything that still hadn't changed at all. What did it all _mean_ that a vampire sometimes had a particular attraction to one human like this? It was impossible for her even to describe to herself what exactly she felt around him anymore and make much sense of it. It was a hundred different things at once. His scent seemed almost like something she already knew, which even as it was like nothing she'd ever smelled before as a human carried with it things that cannot even really be smelled - the ocean breeze raising goosebumps on her skin at the beach, the loud roaring of a motorcycle, a warm hand taking hers in the dark garage, once upon a time, just once. All of it coming back to her more and more even though there could be no going back.

She couldn't decide if she would like to think this was precisely the same thing Edward had gone through while she was human or not. For the most part, she didn't want to think about it too much at all.

Jacob's breathing became less steady and calm and he stirred, rolling away from her and curling up a little like he suddenly felt a cold draft. Maybe he was having a bad dream. Maybe he really did feel cold with her sitting here. Maybe her presence, her scent and cold chill in his room, was causing the dream.

She moved from the bed and instead stood a few feet away from him, watching him in the shadows by the window. His breathing became deep and even again, and after a while he started to snore softly. She looked out the window at the moonlight-bathed trees, thinking for a long time.

They did not know how many from the guard would be coming, or which ones. It was going to be a dangerously close fight, if not uneven. As she stood in Jacob's bedroom watching him sleep, everything here reminding her of an entire other world of things she held dear that she had left behind, it was very hard to feel the kind of reluctance she had felt before about having to fight the Volturi. Just earlier this night she had been thinking about Jane, who she would be the safest trying to attack, picturing her very young face with some horror. But all that did not matter. She did not have to like it. Nothing mattered as long as Jacob and his friends could be saved.

She remembered the trouble she was having mastering her powers, and worried more than ever that she might not be able to learn how to use them right. It felt oddly lonely having to keep it a secret from almost everyone.

When she looked back over at Jacob's still, sleeping figure she could only think,_ Please let me figure this out._


	7. VI: accelerando

chapter **VI** accelerando

* * *

Bella went back to Port Angeles early in the morning with some of the things Jasper had said at the meeting the night before echoing in her mind.

He had mentioned how she had always had a very closed and invulnerable mind, which she had not been thinking about. Quil had asked if this was some kind of special power she had that they didn't know about. That wasn't exactly how she had ever thought about it. But maybe it had something to do with what she was capable of.

All along she had been trying to deliberately use her powers with attempts to control others' immediate actions, the movement of their bodies. But maybe she did not have the power to just bend people to her will like brainless puppets. Maybe it was something more subtle than that. Something having to do specifically with the mind…

She went to the same café. It was a good setting to try to practice in because most of the customers always seemed to be here to study or read and were therefore usually not paying attention to anyone but themselves. Holding a book open she was pretending to read again, Bella looked around the café and her eyes stopped on a man who had a cellphone, cup of coffee, and folder of papers he was looking over on his table.

She first decided she wanted to make him move his coffee cup. He might have to realize that it might be sitting too dangerously close to the edge of the table to do this. It wasn't sitting that close to the edge at all, but just maybe…

This time, Bella thought about trying to control his mind. She concentrated on what she wanted him to think, what she needed to go through his mind for him to act. As the man turned the paper over he was currently looking at with the tip of his pen in his mouth, she finally focused on putting herself in his place, imagining herself thinking, as if she was laying the thought onto his mind, _My cup looks like it might fall off if anybody bumps into the table._

He glanced down at the cup from the paper, reached down and pulled it closer to him.

After just another twenty minutes of sitting in there, Bella had also made the man pick up his phone thinking he had heard it ring when it hadn't, made a woman sitting right next to her feel like she needed to use the bathroom, and made an employee at the counter make a cold chai for somebody who had ordered it hot. Finally she was getting somewhere.

* * *

The large clearing where the Cullens always came to play baseball was bathed in the light from a nearly full moon. As they waited for the pack, Jasper slowly paced back and forth playing with a silver lighter in his hand, flicking the top up and back down repetitively and making a clicking sound that started to disturb Bella after a while because it was somehow ominous echoing in the open silence. Her eyes kept being drawn to it when it shined and made it look like Jasper was holding the moonlight in his hand.

Some of them decided to go ahead and start practicing, and Bella gladly joined them right away to have something to do besides get bothered by the near complete silence. It was going to be different this time because they were dealing with much more intelligent, calculating adversaries. As they divided in pairs to try to simulate how they and the vampires of the Volturi guard would be engaging each other, they did not imitate the way newborns would go right for a direct attack, but used their heads exactly how they would in a fight, trying to fool and mislead each other.

Bella tried fighting with Edward first, but after just a short while it proved nearly impossible for this to be very productive. He could not put enough effort into trying to attack her for her to learn much from her attempts to avoid him getting to her. He seemed to be genuinely trying, but to just be incapable of behaving very aggressively toward her at all. It was as if after all the time she had been human and he had to be so careful with her, he just did not have it in his programming to be able to let loose doing something like this and know he wasn't going to hurt her.

Alice eventually relieved them from this problem when she asked Edward to try with her a while, so Bella ended up paired with Jasper instead. This was when she decided to attempt something that she had not deliberately tried on anyone in her family yet. After just a few moments of them trying to charge toward each other and just barely missing, she started quickly concentrating on something just before she started to run toward him again: she thought of dodging her attack by moving quickly backwards and to the right a little, as if she were in Jasper's head and standing in his place herself, visualizing it clearly as if she were doing it. As she went for him, at just the last moment before she reached him she moved the tiniest bit to his right, so that as he moved that way as well they collided straight together. To everyone else who did not know what else to assume, she knew it would merely look like she was watching him carefully and paying very close attention to his movements. Jasper reacted quickly, immediately throwing himself in the other direction of her, but she already had managed to get a hold on his wrist and he only dragged her along with him for a few feet until she practically climbed up onto him and got her face up by his neck, mouth open and teeth bared.

As Jasper stopped in place with a resigned sigh, Emmett laughed a little and said, "Come on, are you letting her win?"

"Oh yes, that would let her learn a lot," he said sarcastically as Bella released him, and when he turned she saw that his smile looked quite pleased.

The next time they tried it together, she did nothing out of the ordinary. As long as the others were taking notice of how well she was doing, she didn't want to make anyone wonder anything. Jasper got her after seven failed approaches. Then their third time, she was able to keep missing advances from him very easily for almost four minutes, as so many of the times she was the one putting the ideas of how he was going to do them in his head. Finally as she went after him, thinking of something quite different, she actually thought she saw the smallest smirk on his face as if he was a little amused by the thought of what he was going to try. Instead of avoiding her attack by rushing away from her in another direction, he stood still until she was very close and then leaped right toward her, going down toward her feet. He was trying to catch her by surprise by knocking into her and trip her; it was something she had actually seen him successfully do before when fighting with Edward.

But she was expecting this. The split second they were within five feet of each other, she saw his eyes look down right before he was going to do it and abruptly stopped right where she was. Some of the others who had stopped fighting themselves to watch actually made sounds of surprise, hardly able to tell what happened; in an instant she had dived right down to the ground after him and had him pinned down, her teeth ready at the back of his neck.

She let him get up and they stood facing each other once again. He looked just about dauntedly impressed now. "Not bad. But I would not suggest you ever try that, by the way," he added with a grin, nodding down to the ground to show he was talking about the last move he had tried and failed. "If you miss it puts you in a really vulnerable position. You don't want to put your back to anybody."

She laughed. "I think I got that idea."

Emmett was still watching them and he also laughed. When she then looked over at the others and met eyes with Edward, she saw that his face seemed to be carefully frozen, although it held an unmistakable hint of hesitant relief. He seemed to be taking care not to be too happy about it if she appeared to be able to handle this well. Perhaps he did not want her to have too much confidence. She knew he still would prefer it if she were incapable of being part of this at all and had to sit safely on the sidelines.

At this moment, a lot of them started to turn their attention to a part of the forest far off to Bella's left, from which they could now make out the sounds of some very large creatures approaching. She watched as four wolves appeared out of the shadows of the trees which she could recognize as Jacob, Embry, Sam, and Seth. As soon as they had come close, Bella and the others split into new pairs to start practicing again and just went on with what they had been doing before, although now as Jasper fought with Carlisle he stopped every once in a while to mention any pointers he thought of to give the wolves.

After a while, Bella and Edward had both stopped and were taking a break to watch what Jasper and Carlisle were doing. It wasn't long before she noticed the very familiar scent getting closer and then saw the reddish brown wolf approaching the place she and Edward stood. As she watched him come, Jacob slowed within about fifteen feet of her and then stopped where he was as if he felt unsure.

She looked questioningly to her side at Edward, but he was already looking over at Jacob. "Yes, come on then," he said a little impatiently, motioning for him to come over. "You should be fine." He looked down at Bella and explained in a lower voice, "He needs to smell you. All of them will be needing to at some point."

"Smell me?" she asked.

"Yes. Remember? The last time we got to have this much fun together, the pack made sure they familiarized themselves with all of our scents so that there would be no accidents during the fight. But obviously none of them are yet used to how you smell now."

"Oh…Right."

Jacob had now come before them, stopping a few steps away from where Bella was. She looked up at where his massive head was peering down at her, holding her hands into fists in preparation for how much restraint this was going to take.

Edward looked at her again, having just heard something in Jacob's head. "He asks if it still makes you uncomfortable being near him in this form," he said.

She looked into his great yellow eyes with a dry smirk. "Yeah, it's not really any different," she answered.

As she started to take slow steps toward him, Edward followed her for just one stride and then stayed a few feet back behind her as she stood right in from of him. Bella slowly extended her hand before him, and then Jacob leaned his head down and took in a big, loud whiff of the air right above her arm. Then he made a short, gruff noise that sounded almost like a sneeze, and she was quite sure she was able to interpret the meaning even without Edward's help.

"Yeah, I know," she said with a slight air of annoyance. "We can't all smell as great as you around here."

Jacob's massive throat rumbled loudly with that kind of dog laugh she remembered well.

He had asked if it still bothered her being around him when he was like this and she knew what he had really meant, but ironically she could not help but be reminded now of something he used to say about what form she seemed to find it easier for him to be in around her. Even though the large eyes looking at her now were much too intelligent-looking and expressive for ones belonging to a real wolf, it was not quite as difficult as looking at Jacob's real face. They did not show that same barely perceptible shadow of pain she always noticed his eyes carried now, something someone might never even be able to notice looking at him unless they had actually known him before everything changed. Something she, who had at one time lived for that easy smile of his—the face of _my Jacob my sun my _—found impossible to miss.

Rather than lowering her arm then, Bella started to raise it higher toward his nose, very slowly as if to give him the chance to object. Then she touched the top of his snout and started running her hand lightly up and down his fur.

"There," she said quietly. "This isn't so hard."

A moment later Edward looked up at Jacob with a groan of distaste and asked, "You really think that is funny?"

She looked behind her at him. "What?" she asked. "What did he say?"

He rolled his eyes a little and explained, "He said, 'Now the next time you really need to hunt you can say you're so hungry you could drain a whole wolf.' And now he is telling me he can joke about the possibility of his death if he wants to. Yes, _fine_, dog," he said, looking right up at Jacob, "but then do not blame me if I actually laugh."

As Bella looked back at him, she said, "That really_ isn't_ funny, Jacob," though she had already started giggling a little. As she kept petting him gently, trying not to end up leaving too much of her scent on him that smelled so unpleasant to him, she stared up at his enormous shape in thought. If any vampire actually tried to attack a werewolf in this form to drink its blood, they would probably just end up getting themselves killed. She was inclined to agree with Rosalie that this whole thing was much stranger than anything else imaginable.

"It's weird, isn't it?" she said to him, talking in a low voice again. "I'm sure I wouldn't even be able to drink as much blood as you've got like this without exploding, but it's still the same blood. It's really pretty amazing…You can just expand into this much huger and completely different thing in only a second, but underneath it you're still exactly the same person."

She took her hand away from him, starting to feel that she had tested her self-control by being this close to him long enough. Just then Edward, who had his back to them because he had started watching the others fighting again, asked, "Would you like me to tell her about this now? As long as you're thinking about it…"

Bella looked to the side toward him just as he heard Jacob think his answer and said, "Alright." Clearly speaking for him now, he went on, "Sam spoke to Emily about everything and she agreed it's best that she leave. She will be going away on Friday morning."

She looked back at Jacob and nodded after a moment of taking that in. "Well, it's a bit of a relief to know that'll be taken care of, at least," she said. After hesitating for a while, not looking directly at his eyes, she said, "Do you think you could tell Emily for me, before she leaves…?" She sighed, dropping her hands she had been holding together a little uncomfortably to her sides. "I don't know what I want to tell her. Can you just say I'm really sorry about all of this?"

With his back still facing her, Edward said his reply: "Sure. But it's not like it's your fault."

Her eyes immediately dropped from his face again. She found herself unable to look back at him or say anything more before she turned away and walked directly away from him, moving rather quickly.

She was very conscious of every part of her body gradually relaxing as she left him, untightening until she felt like a marionette that had just been released and dropped to the floor. But even as it was a relief to get far away from him again, as she went out into the surrounding area where the stink of all the other wolves was noticeable again and the air seemed less clean to her, it felt almost like stepping outside of a familiar and safe home.

* * *

There was snow.

Aro floated through it like a ghost, gliding so gracefully he barely left a trail in the white that was stained with red in so many places. He was as pale as the paper Jacob had seen his face drawn on, just a general impression of what he would really look like. Jacob saw this even though he was not really here. There were no wolves here. Not standing.

Edward was sinking weakly to his knees, his face looking like it had been wiped away. Before him was scattered what looked like the pieces of a broken ivory sculpture. Jacob saw this only as eyes in the trees, above them in the sky. He could not turn away.

The Volturi were leaving. Aro passed Edward and looked down at the broken-off limbs in front of him. "Make sure you take care of this," he said in a voice of authority, kicking a dismembered arm forward a little to pile it over a leg.

Edward looked up at him and stared like he was looking through a clear window, at nothing near. The words did not seem to have meant anything to him.

"Here." Aro threw out a lighter to him and it landed in the snow.

Snow. It was July. This could not be real.

He saw something closer: the arm that was now lying over another limb, with something silver around the wrist. A linked metal bracelet, from which hung over the white skin a tiny red-brown wolf carved out of wood.

And closer, there was more, worse. A torso, mutilated into a shape that was all wrong. A head, and face -

_This_ could not be real.

Carlisle was beside Edward now. He picked up the lighter and said somberly, "I'll do it."

She was piled together and she burned. The air filled with a charred, intensified ghost of her scent. There was something about the smell that seemed familiar to him, like when the smell of an unidentified decomposing food still contains a trace of you-don't-know-what, something you know you have tasted. Sour berries, powdered sugar that is sweet at first from far away but burns your nose and makes you cough when closer and inhaled.

And the face in the fire. The face...

Jacob woke up with a start, heart pounding, and after his eyes opened to the dark he immediately had the strange feeling that he wasn't alone. He bolted up in bed and looked around the room, but he found it empty. Then the rollercoaster threw him out, the sickening movements finally having their effect now that it had all stopped, and he clutched his stomach, feeling the wrenching in his insides. He fell sloppily out of bed and onto his feet with images from the dream still running together in a red and white blur, sure he was about to be sick. But just as soon as he had stood up and his eyes started adjusting to the dark and seeing everything tangible and real in front of him, the feeling started to pass. He ran a hand across his lightly sweating forehead and cursed in a whisper. He was never going to catch up on all the sleep he was losing lately if he was having the freakiest nightmares.

Suddenly he froze in the middle of scratching his head, hairs raising on the back of his neck in a shiver. That scent. Hers. It was real. It was still_ here_.

He had thought he smelled something like it somewhere in his room the morning before, but assumed he was imagining it. There was no way. But now he wondered...

Something he had thought he felt the moment he woke up. He went over to the bed and - yes. It smelled stronger here. He ran his hand across it, over the top of the blankets. There near one edge of the mattress, opposite from the very warm side where he had been sleeping, was a spot that was as cold as the seat of a car in the winter.

His eyes slowly got large, and then he rushed over to the wide open window and looked out of it into the night, even though he already knew there was no chance he would see anything. It was a still, quiet night with no wind, and nothing in sight moved.

Sighing softly, he turned back around and looked at his bed a moment. He felt completely alert now and knew there was no chance he would be able to get back to sleep. As he turned on the light and started to get dressed, he thought of how it was going to be really hard to keep from thinking about this the next time he and any of the others phased.

* * *

When Bella came home just as the sun was starting to come up, she found Edward sitting at his piano but not playing anything, as if he had stopped and just stayed sitting on the bench for a while, with Esme standing by him. If they had been talking, they stopped when they heard her coming. Esme just looked back and forth between them for a brief moment and then left the room as if she knew Edward had something to say to her.

Bella held her hands together in front of her, just standing and looking at him. "Hi," she said.

"Good morning," he said with a delicate smile.

And she just looked at him passively and waited. She had known this was probably coming.

"Where do you go all this time you are away?" he finally asked.

She supposed Charlie's house would not be a good enough explanation for all this time. Besides sneaking past the boundary line at night, there were all the hours she had spent going away to places she could practice trying to use her powers.

But it wasn't as if she was that willing to even try to lie to him. After a long moment's hesitation she just answered, "I'm sorry to be so secretive. I just have to get myself prepared for this in my own way."

He looked at her a long time, observing her closely, his face only looking gentle. Finally he nodded and smiled a little again. "You are like a complete mystery to me lately," he said.

"You mean more than usual?" she asked with a slight grin.

"Yes," he said in an affectionate tone. "But in a more concerning than fascinating way. I just worry that…Well. I worry that I should be worried."

She shook her head. "Don't be worried."

He stood up and approached her, running his fingers back through her hair. "You know there isn't anything you ever need to be _afraid_ to tell me, right?"

She nodded mechanically. "Yes."

He started to turn away, lowering his hand from her face, but she took it and said, "Come here."

As he held her, her face looked past him where he couldn't see and turned sad, and she realized all at once how much she hated this. She never would have thought she could feel so alone in his arms. There were things she could not share with him, things he had no idea about. And other things she just could not bring herself to be honest with him about because it would do no good to talk about them and there was nothing he could do about them anyway. She had always known him as her angel who could make all of the darkness go away, who could do anything, as it had seemed when she was human and so helpless compared to him. But suddenly there were all of these things he could not make better. She hated it.

* * *

The days seemed to pass with unmerciful speed, every night spent gathering in the clearing with some of the wolves again. On Thursday, Bella took advantage of the brief time Edward and Carlisle had gone somewhere by trying to fight with Alice in the back yard. Alice had to be so careful not to think about what she knew Bella could do when he was there that it would be too risky for them to try this while he was home.

Now that Bella had a much better understanding of her abilities, she had started to suspect that they might be a lot less effective on someone who was actually aware that she had them. It was perhaps even more important than she had realized that they be kept a secret. As she and Alice fought together and she tried to use her powers on her, it quickly became clear that she had been right. Sometimes she was still able to fool Alice into following the sudden inclinations that had not really come from her own head because fighting involved such quick and spontaneous thinking anyway, but just as often she would be concentrating too hard on thinking twice about every move she made and the second's hesitation she took would be enough for the thought that wasn't really hers to pass so she couldn't be bent to Bella's will.

Alice knew when they needed to stop because Edward would be getting back soon, but when he saw them coming inside shortly after him and asked where they had been, she told him casually what they had been doing.

"Don't tell me Bella actually stands a chance against _you,_" he said with a laugh, looking surprised to hear it. "I thought Jasper was impressive."

"Oh, no," Alice answered. "I had to be really careful not to just see what she was going to do the whole time or else it would have been useless for her. Not really easy, though. For me that's like walking around trying to keep my eyes closed when I know I could bump into something."

Edward laughed lightly, but Bella thought she saw something serious in his eyes.

Later, in an attempt to appear that she was fine, she sat in the bedroom reading a book. But as soon as Edward entered the room and came near her, throwing his wallet on the table and setting down some CDs he had just brought in from his car, he could tell at once that her eyes peering down at a page were not really moving across the words at all.

"Bella," he said softly, making her look up. "It is scaring me how hard you are trying."

His surprised, perhaps disturbed reaction after hearing that she had been fighting Alice made more sense now. She looked back down at her book, trying to keep her face natural. "I don't know what you're talking about," she said.

He sat down next to her, looking closely at her face. "I see what's going on. Please. You have to stop blaming yourself."

She was silent a long moment, still staring down vacantly at the page she was on. Finally she said, "We should have told them about the real reason for all of this."

"We_ did _tell them the real reason," Edward said insistently.

She snapped the book shut and finally looked back up at him. "Whether it really matters so much or not...I feel like a total coward keeping it from them. I_ am_ a coward."

"Then just tell one of them," he said. "If you think it is so important. Then he can tell you how ridiculous you are for feeling responsible when you had no idea this ever could have happened."

She shifted her gaze down from his, playing with the corner of her book in her lap. She shook her head. "I don't know if he wants to talk to me," she said quietly. "And even if he does I don't deserve it. If I can't even admit to this…And I…_can't_."

"Stop punishing yourself," he said. "I think you just feel too guilty about a lot more than_ that _when you see him."

For a second she seemed to be holding her mouth together very tight, and she said nothing to that.

"Listen...I understand it isn't easy to think about this," he began carefully, "but you know anything could happen on Saturday night. These last days you have...Do you not see how important they are? I don't want to see you have regrets later that you never..."

As he had started trying to say it she had started shaking her head, and now the movement became quick and frantic. "I can't talk about this," she said stiffly with almost a note of panic in her voice. "I really can't."

"Bella, I am _begging _you to listen to me and think about this," he said, taking her arm until she turned her face to him. "If only you could hear the things he thinks about you—It is _ridiculous._ He does not seem to trust that he knows you anymore. He doesn't really know what to think of you anymore, how to feel about seeing you. He has known nothing new about you since meeting you again except that you are strongly inclined to kill him if you get too close to him. At first it made me angry at him. I thought it was just his hatred for our kind making him feel so alienated from you. But of course he doesn't know what to think if you will barely even speak to him."

"_Edward_," she said heavily, her voice now imploring. "It doesn't _matter! _I've already said goodbye to Jacob. It was hard enough to do once. We belong to completely different worlds now. We may still be friends, by some messed up definition, but not like we were before. I would rather he just remember the way everything was."

After he looked at her a little sadly a long time, saying nothing more, she grabbed her book off the couch beside her again and opened it back up, meaning to really try to read it this time in an attempt to not think about any of these things he wanted her to. He finally just touched her shoulder a moment before standing up and leaving her alone again.

* * *

Jacob was on his break at work and sitting at a table with his feet up on the opposite chair, just staring off into space in thought, when someone hit him on the arm with a rolled-up newspaper to get his attention. Lilah was pulling out a chair and sitting down behind him.

She leaned over toward him and said quietly, "Check out this guy." She nodded her head in the direction of where the pool tables were; the only one being used was where a middle-aged man seemed to be shooting a game by himself. "I've never noticed him before, but Scott says he comes in here all the time. He always practices shooting pool alone for about an hour. He brings in his own really fancy cue to use. But he _sucks. _It's so sad to watch…"

They both watched for a while as he very carefully took about eight seconds to get ready for a shot as if he was almost blind, only for his cue to slip right past the white ball and not touch it once he tried. Lilah snorted, covering her mouth to contain herself.

"But it's so_ funny_," she said. "Poor bastard."

Jacob did not realize he should be laughing until she then went silent and looked straight at his face. It was too late—she would see now he was in no mood. But he still tried to react properly, smiling and saying, "Yeah. Even you can do better than that."

This earned him a second, more hostile slap with her newspaper, and then he managed to laugh a little.

"So what's up?" she said and she started unrolling and unfolding it. "You haven't even told me what you're doing this weekend that's so important."

"A couple friends of mine from out of town will be here," he answered easily, having thought up his story a long time ago. "So I wanted to be free."

"Ah," she said. "I guess that's worth forsaking my weekend off. And I need the hours, anyway. But I think you still got to do something to make it up to me."

"I'll let you win next time we play pool," he said.

"Shut up," she muttered.

For a while he went silent, staring into the air again like he had been doing before she came and started talking to him.

"You're kind of…subdued lately," Lilah observed, seeming unsure about what word to use to describe it as she was already used to him not always acting quite normal. "Something on your mind?"

He shrugged. "No. I'm just tired."

She accepted that answer, going quiet as well as she started reading something in the paper. But then he went on to say, "Lilah, what would you do if you were in love with two people at the same time?"

She looked up at him like this was the last thing she ever would have expected to hear next, and gave a short laugh. "God, isn't one person enough trouble?"

"Apparently not for some people."

"Okay, who are we talking about?"

He couldn't believe he had started this, but now he supposed he could make her buy it. "One of these friends of mine," he said. "It's a long story."

She laughed again. "Well, I guess you just have to figure out which one is more important to you if you love two people."

"But what if you know that neither of them is harder for you to be without than the other? Should any relationship actually involve the kind of sacrifice it would be to have to choose one in that case? It seems to me that could make everything between you messed up, with one person giving so much and the other one just getting."

She shrugged. "Shit, I don't know. That's why most of the time I don't try to stick to just one person." She gave a short laugh. "Hm…I guess you'd just have to hope whichever person you stay with will come to mean more to you so it wouldn't be such a loss anymore to give up the other."

He sighed. In some ways it was the exact opposite of what he needed to hear. Though he wasn't even sure what he wanted to hear, or what had made him start wondering about this. "Well, it doesn't matter. He's pretty much picked who he wants to be with anyway."

"Then why are you thinking so much about it?"

He shook his head, crossing his arms and staring away thoughtfully. "I was just wondering…if the situation was different…what the hell could have been done."

She finished reading the article she had been looking at in the paper and then leaned back in the chair, yawning widely. "You have a dollar bill?" she asked him. "I want to play something good on the box."

He shook his head, smiling. "You need more hours so bad, yet it's unbelievable how much money you must put in that juke box every week."

"Come on. You look like you could use some B-52's."

He had already started digging in his pocket for a dollar. When he found one and held it out to her, he waited until she reached for it and then pulled it back away. "For the love of God…the Doors?"

She smirked. "Well, okay," she said, and then took the dollar.

Where he was standing behind the bar, their supervisor Scott called, "Lilah, I know we're not busy, but you've been off the clock too long."

"I know, I know," she said quickly as she practically bounced over to the juke box. "Just give me a second."

Jacob grinned a little as he watched her go over there, but as he kept looking at her his smile sunk. They were alike in a lot of ways. It was easy to forget when with her that Lilah wasn't exactly normal. She had already been through things most people her age couldn't even fathom, lived through needing money so badly she would have done crazy things and been treated like dirt by people. But she didn't let it show. And it was sometimes easy to forget when with her that he wasn't normal either. Even if it was like a breath of fresh air at the moment after what he had been dealing with the past few days, ultimately that couldn't be good for either of them.

It was Friday. His last times going in to work this week had all gone by very fast. Later that night as he drove Lilah home, he felt like there must be something to say to her. But she spent half the ride on the phone ordering Chinese for when she got home.

"…Right, a small one. And hold on," she said, putting her phone away from her ear a second and tapping Jacob's shoulder. "Do you want anything?"

He glanced away from the road at her with his brow raised. "Oh—No, I won't be staying around."

She nodded and then raised the phone back to her ear. She was finishing the call and about to hang up just as he pulled up to her building.

"Can't come up for a while?" she said after he stopped the car.

He shook his head, looking as tired as ever now. "I got to get home soon," he said.

She stayed still in the seat, just looking at him for a moment like she was trying to see something that must be there. "You really doing okay? I haven't been seeing much of you."

He nodded even though he knew he might not be very convincing. "Yeah…I guess it's just been kind of a rough week."

She leaned over toward him and ran a finger under his jaw. "All the more reason to come in," she said, smiling up at him.

He laughed lightly and then actually hesitated to answer. "No," he said finally, shaking his head again. "Can't tonight."

She shrugged and then sat back up straight. "Alright. Thanks for the ride then, as always," she said, slapping his leg lightly before turning to open the door. But he stopped her for a moment by taking her wrist, with just his thumb touching the soft inside of her palm, not quite holding her hand.

He looked right at her face as he said, "Take care, Lilah."

He released her wrist and then she stared at him with a strange look for a moment, obviously realizing how much more serious it had seemed to sound than when he usually said goodbye for the night. But he just smiled casually and then turned his face forward, putting his hands on the wheel.

"Sure," she said. "See you."

As he always did when just dropping her off, he waited until she had made it inside before driving away. She never turned around and waved before going in. He would usually turn up the radio once he was alone in the car and mess with the dials, finding a station he wanted, and wait to see out of the corner of his eye the light spilling out from the door when she went inside and then shrinking to darkness again. He never followed her the whole way with his eyes, watching her go as if there was something to see. But tonight was different and he did. He might never have recognized her silhouette, the way she appeared for a second as a small form in the doorway.

* * *

Bella stood alone in Carlisle's dark office, staring at an old framed picture on the wall.

* * *

It had been raining hard earlier so all of the windows in Jacob's house were shut, stifling the night and making the whole house very quiet. Before he was going to get into bed, he stopped and looked over at his bedroom window. He went in front of it and stood staring out of it for a long moment, tapping his fingers on the ledge in deep thought. He thought of freezing cold snow that had felt so real, the smell of pale white winter and sight of wet crimson splattered against it, and of shutting the nightmares out. Of letting them in only for them to become real…

He opened the window in a fast, somewhat frustrated way as if to get it over with before he changed his mind. It wouldn't have been able to keep her out anyway.


	8. VII: blood sport

chapter **VII **blood sport

* * *

On the final day they had to get ready, Bella and the rest of the Cullens all went hunting once more to make sure they would have as much strength as possible. She spent the rest of the day alone with Edward. They went to the meadow and stayed there for hours. It was as gloomy as usual outside and the ground was still a little soft from rain under the thick grass. Bella kept her eyes open and staring up at the gray sky while Edward made love to her. They said only little to each other.

At the beach in La Push, a small gathering of people from the pack sat around the circle of logs set up there for fires. Jacob lay across the ground with his head resting back on one of the logs and his legs bent so that his feet rested on the edge of the remains of black driftwood from the last fire someone had burned there.

Jared was dealing with it by talking about it, while Quil, Paul, and Embry sat staying very quiet by comparison. Just remember, he was saying. Just make sure none of them get a hold of you around your leg or anything. You have to pick somebody to stick close to and look out for. Especially because of the little one. Jane, Embry reminded him. Right.

Jacob just stared up at the sky that was already starting to tint to a darker gray, never saying anything. After a while he closed his eyes as if to shut out all of his surroundings and escape. But Jared never stopped talking, and no matter how much he tried to get lost in his own thoughts he could not ignore his words enough to let them all blur together into meaningless murmuring. Keep looking around you to be careful not to get your back to anybody. Make sure you always give Alice some space because if you do anything to directly affect what she's doing she won't be able to see it coming. It was like cramming for a really important test.

Without opening his eyes, Jacob suddenly muttered, "Shut up, Jared."

They all looked toward him in some surprise, acknowledging him for the first time in a while as if they could have thought he was sleeping. For a few seconds they just stared like they could not be sure if they had really heard it come from him.

"What?" Jared said.

"Just shut up," he sighed. "Or talk about something else."

They were as prepared for this as they were ever going to be, and had been for a while. It was all they had been talking about around each other the whole week. A couple days ago he had already become tired of all the anticipation and worrying. This was happening. In a strange way he was impatient for the hour of tonight they had been looking toward to just finally be here. After just about going crazy thinking about it all the time for days, he was eager to just let the wolf take over all of it and release himself into the fight. What would happen would happen.

* * *

When the Cullens came to the clearing twenty minutes before midnight, there were already a few of the werewolves waiting there right in the center, standing in a group in their human forms. Hidden to everyone else, the other half of the pack was visible to them as approaching figures of wolves in the distant trees surrounding the clearing.

There was a full moon above them and it was not as dark as the first night they had met here. Bella could see clearly when she was still far away who the four people waiting and not yet phased were. If Brady realized how much a vampire would also be able to hear from so far away, he did not seem to care.

"Aw, damn. I should have made sure I phased back before the bloodsuckers showed up," he said. "Makes me feel weird about having to get undressed again, even if I go way over there." He motioned toward the trees, from which the six other wolves were now starting to emerge. "You know they can see freaking everything."

"They've got _manners_," Jacob said in a half-serious tone, like he was almost close to laughing. "They'll look the other way."

Emmett quietly laughed.

Once they got very close and all slowed to a moderate walk, Bella started to wonder why some of them were just standing here like this not changed yet. Perhaps, even though they could more easily communicate with each other in their other forms, it made some sense that they would want to spend as many of these last moments before the fight as they could as themselves.

When all of the vampires were within a few strides of them, a few of the werewolves turned. Some of them just nodded to them in greeting and looked back away. But one of them kept looking their way. Before she had seen him coming, it seemed, Jacob was suddenly closer to her than anyone else there and looking right at her. For once she was able to meet eyes with him with a strong, unhesitant gaze. He stayed five steps away from her, and for a moment she noticed him glancing in the direction of Edward with a slightly annoyed look, as if he had noticed him appearing concerned when he came this close. Just out of the corner of her eye, Bella saw Edward then quickly turn away to stop looking at them.

The moment for one of them to say hello or some kind of greeting to open the exchange came and then passed after hanging there a while, and with that a certain comfort settled in place between them, for they did not need to say anything only for the purpose of saying something now. That was how they had been. They had never needed words to understand one another or felt the need to fill silences with anything just to make them stop feeling awkward. It was the first time they would directly speak to each other face-to-face since meeting again, but suddenly it didn't feel like the first of anything, just the same as it had always been.

Jacob finally said what he had to. "How far away from you do I need to make sure I stay?"

She shook her head a moment, shrugging. "Just stay as far away as you can," she said. "Try to avoid my scent as much as possible the whole time."

He nodded, but something about the answer seemed to make it difficult for him to accept it like that. Something was bothering him.

"What if I see you need help?" he asked after a long hesitation.

She was taken aback by the question; she had not thought about that kind of thing at all, of course. But she did not have to think about it very hard. "The best you can do to help me is not get too close," she answered simply.

His face was carefully unchanging after he heard that, but then for a second she thought she saw a hint of defiance in his eyes, and even without seeing it she would know. He would never listen to her.

But she tried to assure herself that it didn't matter. It was the wolves the Volturi were after. There was no reason to think it was at all likely she would ever end up in serious danger while he was available to come to her rescue, but no one else closer.

Jacob gave a small nod again, and then he said, "Well…I got to go."

He turned and started heading for the edge of the clearing, and something pulled at her from inside, pulling her voice out of her throat, and she said, "Jacob" without quite knowing why.

He stopped and turned back, looking at her again and waiting. She opened her mouth to speak again, but nothing came out. He could see in her face how she was struggling to find the right words she felt the need to say at this moment. After a long silence, he just smiled at her weakly. The look he gave her then, even though it was so empty and had no genuine hope or light in it, was somehow still a little relieving and encouraging to see.

"It's okay," he said. "I know."

She smiled back at him a little, just barely. Then he turned away again and started to run far off, disappearing into the shadows of the confining forest to phase. The others quickly followed.

It seemed like everything suddenly became so silent. Bella stood completely still, frozen in so many overwhelming thoughts that she was not even thinking about what she was doing and paying attention to what was happening around her, with her hands gripped tightly together and held close against her under her chin. Edward's presence surprised her in a strange way, pulling her out of the pitch black cave of her head, when he came in front of her and held her shoulders, leaning over to talk softly close to her ear.

"Don't worry," he just said, lowering one of his hands and rubbing it up and down her back assuringly. "Don't worry."

It somehow felt to her like it had been ten minutes when a minute after leaving, Jacob and the other three came back into the clearing to join the other wolves with their only clothes they had worn attached to them with chords as usual. While some of the others kept talking to each other every once in a while in low voices, Bella and Edward only waited in complete silence.

No one said anything when she and the other vampires started to hear it, though some of them looked at each other in a way that probably gave it away to the wolves. The constant running of so many feet sounded like a very distant, soft rain, all of the light and graceful steps so fast that they were almost indiscernible as separate sounds.

"They're here," Carlisle said quietly.

The wolves all immediately began to move. Almost every one of them had already been standing near another who they were planning to stay close to during the fight, but now they became more clearly separated into pairs, each one standing right at the side of a partner. Jacob and Sam joined each other standing somewhat in the middle of the crowd of wolves, and when the Cullens all moved into a scattered line in front of them, they stood directly behind them and a little in front of all the other wolves.

The many dark running shapes all came out into the clearing in such an orderly, evenly spaced formation with three of them clearly in the lead that they reminded Bella of migrating birds flying together in an arrow shape. The perfect order seemed to fall apart a little, though, as some of them who may have not already noticed who the pack was accompanied by saw it now. She heard distant, confused murmurings between some of them before they got very close.

But when the Volturi slowed down and started coming closer to them, they immediately arranged themselves again; Aro, Caius, and Marcus walked in front together while the guard followed side-by-side in a perfect line with Alec and Jane the centerpoint, the shortest figures of them all in the middle. Every long step forward they took was rigidly synchronized, and they all stood with the same straight posture, looking straight forward and never anywhere else. There were a dozen of them in the back line that made up the guard. They were not immediately easy to differentiate with their long cloaks and hoods hiding so many of their features, but some of them were people Bella recognized from meeting in Volterra while there were others she had never seen before. A beautiful dark-skinned woman on the left end of the line seemed only vaguely familiar to her, and then with some momentary shock she recognized her as Gianna, the receptionist who had been human when she saw her before. Her eyes were just a slightly more severe red than those of most of the other members, making Bella assume she must have been turned almost a whole year ago. There was a male vampire who also appeared to be a newborn on the opposite end of the line; she guessed that the ones walking closer to the middle had some kind of higher ranking.

When they finally came to an abrupt stop before them, Carlisle came forward, putting himself right in between both groups. Aro was looking around at all of them with a completely confounded look on his face.

"What_ is _this, Carlisle?" he asked, sounding like he was trying to make sense of the most outrageous spectacle he had ever seen.

"I'm afraid it is what it looks like," Carlisle answered easily, his voice sounding a little restrained with regret even as he spoke so certainly.

Aro finally looked straight at Carlisle's face, starting to appear a little bit pained. "Oh, _come _now…You would not have me release my guard on you and your dear family. Is this some sort of bluff to try to get me to change my mind?" He did not even wait for an answer before looking around at the wolves behind them as if the sight answered it for him, showing him just how ridiculous the idea was. "But how can this be so _important_ to you? After the whole time you—"

"Aro." Bella heard Marcus interrupt him with the soft murmur, and Aro turned to look at him as he said something then that was too quiet for anyone else to understand. After a pause of taking in his words, Aro laughed lightly as if he had just told him something a little amusing, but Bella knew how likely Marcus was to say something intentionally humorous.

"What?" he said quietly, not seeming to completely understand. "It can't be…"

Marcus held up his hand. After Aro lightly touched his finger to one of his, a vague expression crossed over his face a moment, and then his eyes lit up with astonishment.

"Well, my _word_," he sighed, looking back out at the strange gathering of allies in front of him. Then Bella was sure he was looking straight at her for a split second, though he seemed to avoid being obvious about it, and then right from her his gaze moved to a point behind her and settled on something much larger and taller that had him raising his eyes almost up to the sky.

She did not realize who he had been staring right at for a while with his amazed and slightly disgusted look until she heard one of the wolves let out a sharp, angry growl that actually made Aro step back a little bit in surprise and she glanced behind her to see Jacob leaning forward in a threatening stance, baring his razor-sharp teeth with the fur on his back raised.

With a little timid hesitation, Bella looked to her side at Edward, wondering what he could tell was crossing through everyone's minds at the moment. But his face was extremely passive and controlled now, showing nothing.

Even without him interpreting for anyone, however, Aro's expression was now showing much more apparent disgust, and he was obviously able to tell that Jacob's intended message was something rude like "What are you staring at?"

He looked back at Carlisle and just shook his head in a resigned way. "Well, this is so unfortunate," he said with heavy disappointment. "Will you reconsider this at all, Carlisle? I hate to senselessly have to harm any of you."

"I am sorry, but in this situation it is only you who is in a position to reconsider," Carlisle said. "And I already know you will not."

Aro shook his head slowly again. "No…At least I am relieved that you do not expect as much from me. I see now you are serious, not simply…_pretending_ you are willing to go this far."

"Of course not. I know your way. And I would never count on any kind of bluff being able to intimidate your guard."

"Indeed, no. It is only you anyone should be scared for now. Our numbers may be less, but I do not think I have to tell you of the advantages we have."

"We are aware of the danger," Carlisle said, his voice starting to sound a little tired, almost impatient.

"Yes, yes…A moment then," Aro requested, turning to face his guard.

He started walking back and forth quickly, talking to them at a low, private volume. Carlisle took the opportunity to turn around and say something to the pack. "Can you see? There are two newborns. I know we weren't expecting that."

"I can't believe how many they brought for this," Jasper muttered. "That must be the entire guard."

"I told you, werewolves are the only thing that ever makes Aro nervous."

"I can only speak for one of you at a time," Edward said quickly in an urgent tone, and after looking around at several of the wolves he glanced right at Jacob. "They will be better trained for working together than the other newborns we fought before, won't they?"

"Definitely," Jasper said. "I think the only major difference you will find in fighting them is that they are stronger. We cannot really take advantage of them."

After Aro finished giving the members of the guard some brief direction, he turned back to face the others. His face was still full of so much disappointment, though not quite sadness, as if something he had been looking forward to had just had all of the fun of it completely spoiled for him. He raised his arm and gave a very quick, subtle gesture with his hand, and his fighters all responded in unison by pushing their hoods back from their heads and then taking off their cloaks. They let them fall from their shoulders to the ground and left them there to promptly start marching off, spreading out away from each other.

After a moment Bella saw that they were walking far out near the perimeter of the clearing and starting to form a circle around everyone else. All of them did this so naturally, already knowing which way to go. She shuddered a little just seeing the way they all moved in such an organized fashion like parts of the same body working together, as if they were governed by the same mind. As she was becoming so overtaken with fear that it was almost hard to imagine how she would be able to move again and start doing what she had to in only a few moments, the Volturi vampires all looked completely calm, almost bored.

She felt Edward take her hand firmly where he was standing right at her side. "Stay close to me," he said quietly.

Aro, Marcus, and Caius were also moving out to the outer edge of the open area, stopping where they would stay and watch. The guard had now stopped and turned to face inward, now in a neat circle with equal distance between each of them.

Bella heard a faint, alarmingly delicate and soft voice speaking in a whisper, and looked to her left to see Alec looking away from Jane at his side, who he appeared to have just been quickly saying something to. Then he turned around and Bella only saw him lean his weight forward the slightest bit and dart toward the surrounding area in the start of a run before he turned into just a blur of fast movement and then just as soon had completely vanished from view, as if he had turned into nothing.

Then, before she could even prepare herself, there were other empty spots in the circle of vampires surrounding them that others had moved from. And with a sudden breakout of hostile noises coming from both sides, loud growls and shouting, all too soon it had begun.

* * *

The world around her had been turned into a bloody horror movie playing at a speed too fast to follow as all the creatures of the night imploded into each other with murderous, unstoppable determination. The air was filled thickly with an ugly, chaotic song of the wolves' howls of pain, the vampires' shouts and panicked cries, and Jacob's blood calling and pulling at her from his open wounds. The smell of any other blood was so overwhelming everywhere around her it was all indiscernible, unclear where it was from a wolf and where it may be some human's blood that had been spilled from a vampire.

It was worse than any nightmare she ever could have conceived in her own head with her own most brutal fears. It was hell.

Bella tried to follow Jane, but it was almost no use at all. They had been ready for her to be a problem for her. Alec in particular seemed to be keeping a close eye on Bella to keep her from getting anywhere near his sister. But at least it was always easy to quickly notice where Jane was because her whereabouts would keep getting announced by the sudden cries from someone near her as she used her powers on them.

"Leah, turn—!" Edward was shouting to her just as Alec appeared out of nowhere right on her tail. Bella was dodging attacks from the male newborn next to him, but with quick glances at Leah she was able to see her turn quickly around right before Alec grabbed her around the leg. But in the blink of an eye he then had taken one of her front legs, and Edward lunged for him—

And fell down the moment he had touched him, cringing all over his body, his eyes wide and focused on nothing as if he was suddenly seeing something horrible in his head that was real to nobody else. Gasping, Bella risked a quick look around and saw where Jane was staring at Edward with a mild, pleased expression as she watched him suffer.

The distraction cost her; the newborn ran toward her again and she tried to move an instant too late. He caught her by the arm and then bit right into it. She screamed out of shock as much as in response to how much it hurt; she was not used to physical pain anymore. But she thought fast, jumping right into her attacker's head and imagining clearly the feeling of another vampire's teeth biting into his back behind him. Thinking someone else was attacking from behind, the newborn released her right away and turned only to find nobody behind him, and just before she would have taken advantage of the moment by getting him he ran right away from her. She saw him going after Seth, who at the moment was fighting nobody, right before Seth himself noticed and ran to meet him. It definitely seemed that Aro must have ordered them not to waste their time trying to hurt any other vampires as long as they weren't getting in the way of the wolves.

As soon as she was free to, she rushed back to join Edward, who Jane had left alone after Rosalie and Emmett stepped in to chase off her and Alec. Leah was limping around but seemed to be okay now, dragging Felix away from Jared with his foot in her teeth when Bella glanced her way. She and Edward grasped hands, him pulling her along with him to help Quil as soon as he knew he was the next wolf Alec was thinking about going after. But before they reached him, Edward once again was stopped when he fell helplessly to the ground, groaning through clenched teeth with the unbearable pain. Bella could not help but stop for a second, looking down at him in horror, and then quickly looked around to try to find Jane. She didn't get the chance before Demetri came at her from the right and she gasped when he almost got his teeth in her side. Edward began to stand up, released from the torture for just a moment, but then collapsed all over again. Bella kept dodging Demetri's advances, but it was so hard to focus on thinking of what to do to use her powers against him when she just wanted to get to Jane and stop her.

"Just don't look at him, Bella!" Jasper shouted to her where he was fighting a woman with very long black hair about ten feet from her, having just noticed how she kept glancing toward Edward on the ground.

Of course. It was just what they wanted. She had to keep herself pulled together and focused.

But it wasn't long before Demetri left her alone just as the newborn had, and just then she spotted Jane out of the corner of her eye. She ran for her, but Alice appeared right in front of her just in time to take Alec by surprise when his face was suddenly right by Bella's, teeth bared to sink into her neck as he leaped up toward her. Alice grabbed him by the leg and pulled him onto the ground; Bella grabbed his arms and felt a brief thrill of hope - if they could just kill him together now it would make everything suddenly more even between both sides, if they just got him—

"_Ah!_" Alice cried, suddenly dropping Alec and falling over, and Bella knew exactly what was happening already but did not get the chance to look around for Jane before Alec had gotten his teeth in her arm. Almost at the same time Edward was suddenly at her side, grabbing Alec right around the middle and biting into his neck to pull him off of her.

Bella was starting to be able to predict how Jane and Alec were working together, and she knew Edward was doing things he knew already would just get Jane to hurt him rather than be successful. She needed to think ahead, and she had already found where Jane had just stopped torturing Quil and was clearly about to turn her powers on somebody else before she did, and she started running toward her the moment the pain made Edward let go of Alec.

Some confusing flashes of movement that her eyes could not follow rushed around her, and then neither Jane or Alec were in sight.

Bella looked around frantically as Edward came back to her side, eyes wide. "Where's Jane?" she said in a fast, worried voice. "How did I lose her?"

Edward looked a little shocked. "We won't be able to see her," he said with strong annoyance. "Alec is carrying her on his back."

Many of the others heard this where they were fighting nearby, and Jasper looked over at them briefly with a stunned expression. "I've never known them to try _that_," he said.

"Come on," Edward said to her as he saw that Collin was taking on two vampires at the same time far away, and they went for him together. Felix came between them to stop them from getting to him, and before Bella could even move again Edward started fighting him and deliberately driving the fight many feet away from her. He kept doing this; he did not seem to want to put any of the killing into Bella's hands and kept making sure he took all the fights he could instead of her. But she went on hurrying to Collin, assured at least by the fact that she knew exactly where Edward was and she wasn't going far from him even though it made her feel almost sickeningly horrible leaving him behind facing somebody.

Collin was torn up all over his body and covered in blood, but as soon as Bella engaged one of the vampires attacking him he seemed strong enough to still face the remaining one. As she fought the other, she heard some of the Volturi far away shouting to each other in Italian, sounding frustrated but far from anxious or scared. Then even further away, she could make out some other things being shouted over all the other noise that were almost dangerously distracting to hear.

"No, Gianna, just help Nicholas! Get the Alpha!—No, he said it's the_ red_ one!_ Take him down!_"

"Don't just drive them further into the center! Try to get them away from the damn mind-reader!"

Not far away from where Bella, Collin, and Edward were, Alice was fighting the black-haired female. Bella was able to see enough of her while still concentrating on what she was doing to be able to tell that the female seemed to give up after a while after seeing how quickly Alice could react to every move. Then something happened that almost caught Bella's eye too much for her to keep fighting; the female turned to try to run, and Alice completely missed an easy opportunity to stop her, suddenly going still and looking extremely confused and disoriented. Bella had known her long enough to tell that she must have momentarily stopped being able to see what was coming her way.

But Edward could tell something was going to happen before it did.

"Alice!_ Move!_" he roared in warning. Too late.

Sam was charging right in Alice's direction, clearly intending to move past her to get to somebody else, but completely unseen by her as she stood facing the other way. All at once he let out a terrible howl of pain and his legs failed. Bella felt the great thump of his huge body landing on the ground under her feet, and the momentum of how fast he had been running sent him tumbling forward out of control. It happened so fast Alice was taken completely by surprise and screamed as he knocked right into her and she was buried for a second under his limp form that was still trembling from Jane's torture. In this second after he then rolled off of her that she was still disoriented and couldn't see anything that would happen they were both completely vulnerable, and to Bella's horror there were suddenly three vampires coming at them like dogs running to meat that had just been dropped on the ground for them to grab, including the one that had been fighting her a moment before.

It was this one that stopped Jasper from making it in between Alice and her attackers as he flew toward her, and Jasper fought back with such sudden ferocity that it seemed obvious to Bella who would win that fight. The second went right for Sam before Bella drove him away and took him on, and right before Alice could get back on her feet the third, a male with long brown hair, had pounced right onto her, pinning her down on the ground and immediately starting to pull at one of her arms.

"_Jasper?!_" she called in a shrill voice with an edge of panic like nothing Bella had ever heard come out of her mouth before, and for a horrifying second Jasper could only let out a roar of rage as his opponent continued to be in his way and Bella was sure Alice was going to lose her arm. She did not notice the heavy pounding of running paws approaching before a huge mouth full of slick, glimmering teeth suddenly closed around the brown-haired vampire with a slight crunching sound. He yelped loudly and let go of Alice right away as Paul dragged him away from her, running off shaking him back and forth in the grip of his teeth.

Wherever Jane was, she had gotten bored with Sam and moved on to concentrate on something else, and with a somewhat relieved-sounding grunt he rolled quickly over onto his feet. Bella then heard from a little far in the distance the strange, unmistakable sound of a vampire's body being destroyed, and she risked a glance over to the opposite side of the mob of monsters she was near, afraid of what she would see. But it was only Jacob with Gianna, holding her on the ground with one paw and starting to tear her apart by gnawing off a leg.

Before Sam could run off to join him again and help, Edward called something to him quickly without looking away from the fight he was in. "Sam, watch out—They're trying to separate you two! Don't leave him by himself again!"

He gave a slight nod with his head before charging off.

It went on and on for what felt like hours when not even half an hour had yet passed. It was impossible for Bella to be much use as the only one who would have no trouble trying to go after Jane when along with Alec she only let herself be seen briefly as they both appeared to strike briefly but hard like stinging bees, leaving some of the wolves with crippling injuries that would weaken them for a critical amount of time before they healed. But as long as nothing was going on to make it especially hard for her to keep her head clear enough to manipulate people's minds she survived every fight, very nearly but never quite managing to seriously hurt any of her opponents before they escaped her, and was even able to help others around her miss some close calls with some subtle influence on the Volturi fighters' thoughts.

Even as everyone tried to keep the fight contained to just the area of the clearing as Jasper had warned was so important, after a while more and more of the wolves ended up being driven out into the trees where it was not so easy for others to notice what was happening to them, or else needing to chase a vampire off in a certain direction too much to be able to help but stray a little far. Bella became the most worried about Alec and Jane waiting far off in the surrounding trees to corner wolves who ended up in small numbers or alone there, and whenever she could she kept glancing all around them to see if she could notice even the smallest hint of movement in the distant shadows.

At one point Bella had noticed Paul and Jared chasing the black-haired female away into the forest a minute ago and they still had not come back. She, Edward, and Quil were trying to gang up on a couple they had isolated from the others a little when she noticed a quick movement in the forest next to her and thought she saw Sam's black-coated mass running somewhere for a second. It was only then she realized that Jacob was not in the clearing anymore either. But she kept herself from dwelling on thoughts about it, focusing on what she needed to be doing as she and the other two circled the couple. Quil went for one of them first, and then all five of them became a blurred mass of lunging and missing for almost a minute. Bella was about to use her powers to distract one of them by making them think the other had just called their name in warning, only hoping these things she was doing were still not too obvious to anyone…

Then, stealing her attention away, a high-pitched canine whimper echoed from far away in the forest to her right that was piercing to her acute ears. Somehow she thought she knew the sound, intuitively connecting an identity to it. She looked that way and froze, realizing in a rush of scared thoughts that when she had thought she saw Sam he was moving in the opposite direction that the sound had come from. And though Jared and Paul were still very far away, she had just been able to see exactly where they were a minute ago, still fighting in the forest off to the left of her. She looked quickly back toward the groups fighting, following all the unbelievably fast-moving figures with her eyes to take in who was there and still not there, and it only confirmed the worries darkening her head to murky, unfocused black.

Edward had stopped and looked toward the trees in alarm right after she had when she heard it, but it seemed he had for a different reason. Embry was now available to come help Quil take on the two vampires near them. As they were driven away Edward suddenly looked at Bella with great fear, not worrying or imagining the worst but knowing, as Jacob was still close enough that he could tell exactly what was happening to him. He was looking at her like he knew what this would mean and was already painfully struggling to let her go. He clearly did not want to have to tell her, but his face gave it away anyway.

She could tell from the look in his eyes that it was bad. She knew. Jacob was alone.

She stared back at his begging face, feeling an agonizing pull, but already knew her feet were going to move. That was why it was so hard to look at him then.

"I love you," she said, and then she was off.

She knew he would understand that she meant _Don't follow me_, that he already knew he couldn't because it was too important for him to stay with the others, and that it would kill him. But still she ran and the trees rustled past her in a dark green blur.

It felt more and more like her heart was being slowly torn out of her chest the further she ran from Edward, while at the same time something else rooted painfully deep inside her like a sharp hook was pulling her forward, rushing far ahead of her so that she could not keep up, could not possibly run fast enough. It was almost like having a living heartbeat pounding inside her again, the way the gripping fear now felt like a constant, rhythmic stabbing of pain in that place in the center of her chest, driving her feet to pound against the ground and propel her forward like it seemed they never had before. With every panging stab of fear her head was screaming a name over and over. _JANE JANE JANE JANE JANE JANE—_

* * *

His scent was so easy to follow. His blood was everywhere. It wasn't long before she could also hear the panicked, hammering beat of his heart. The scent brought her to a very small clearing where the moon suddenly appeared round and bright over her head again and where small white flowers grew all around. Many of the flowers were stained red with blood. As soon as she reached this place she gasped and covered her nose and mouth, trying to keep her breath held and her head clear and sharp. The blood-painted flowers made a path of prominently noticeable red spots on the ground leading off to the end of the clearing opposite from where she stood, eventually leading to flowers that were all red, glistening wetly with it. And then they ended, blocked by a massive, dark shape that could have been mistaken for something not living if not for its small, trembling movements and heavy breaths.

There he was, lying on the ground whimpering softly and shaking around a little as if he was trying to throw something small off of his back, his red-brown coat of fur shining slick with his blood in so many places. But a lot of this seemed to be left there just from wounds that were already healed. Although the smell of his blood was so strong here because it was spread all over the place, it was not as powerful as she thought it should be if he was still bleeding anywhere. Even if some of his bones were broken, she couldn't see what had him in so much pain that he was trembling so uncontrollably, making her cringe and feel like she herself was hurting just by seeing him this way. And why was he alone? What would have made Sam leave him and the vampire that had hurt him go without finishing him off?

The answer seared into her mind at the same moment that he finally became aware of someone standing there and turned his huge head toward her. And as their eyes met, the gigantic wolf's with her amber vampire's, an involuntary, denying moan came out of her throat.

He had been left still alive like this because he would not be able to fight again anyway and he was as good as dead. She could think of nothing else that would have made Sam abandon him here if he really needed to. He had been bitten.

She couldn't speak. She could barely move. So paralyzed by the immediate shock and despair that seized her all over, all she could do was look at him and shake her head frantically back and forth, refusing to believe it, swallow it, no no no no no.

And those large eyes, not animal eyes at all, so expressive and human and_ his_, mirrored the look on her own face and seemed to become even more filled with agony at seeing her reaction. And before she knew what was happening, he was shrinking. His shape started lowering down to the ground, the fur shortening and then disappearing into smooth copper skin. It all seemed to happen without him meaning for it to, as natural as one's heartbeat eventually slowing down again or a slow exhale of breath, and once it started he could not reverse it and was soon just a shaking, naked figure on the ground, immediately curling up on his side.

She didn't think. She couldn't think enough to wrap her head around what it meant that he had changed back into himself. She couldn't think enough to give up yet. If it wasn't so bad yet that he could still move, maybe that was a good sign. She ran to him, dropping to his side on the ground and touching his shoulder.

He looked up at her with pleading eyes that pulled at her hopelessly, saying Please. Help me. Kill me. End it. I'm scared I don't care just stay with me.

That was when she noticed he was clutching one hand over his right shoulder. She took his wrist to pull it away and look: there it was, a deep single bite right above where his collar bone ended. It was so ridiculous that she should think of something like this at such a time, but strangely enough, it was exactly where she had been thinking about kissing him as he held her in the car the night she had just nearly died.

She didn't hesitate. She waited only long enough to prepare herself, her left hand digging into the ground with a kind of fierce determination, before she bent over and put her mouth to the wound. She heard Jacob gasp softly, and with his hand she had pulled away from the bite and was still touching he held hers against his chest and gripped it tightly there.

The immediate feeling of release was so powerful and overtaking. To her body, this taste meant finally giving in, but she had to grab on so tightly to herself and not let her rational thoughts get buried under it. Mixed with his blood was something else thicker and tasteless like water that was harder to draw out and seemed to never stop coming out. Soon it seemed she was getting almost all blood and hardly any of the venom in her mouth, and she just hoped as much as she could with a brain that could hardly focus on more than one thing right now that the other taste would pass.

Jacob's right arm circled around her as he gritted his teeth against the intensely burning pain and his other hand she wasn't holding found itself raked in her hair, grabbing a tight handful of it at the back of her head. She would have thought he was getting ready to try to pull her off of him if she wouldn't stop, only he was holding her even closer to him.

She was only vaguely aware of the sound of a set of paws running toward them and the smell of another wolf coming before Jacob gasped out, "No, Sam—Go back." She could imagine how this would appear to him as he approached: the predatory creature perched over her helpless victim, drawing life out of him. Devastatingly beautiful femme fatale and kiss of death. But she was giving life, not taking it away.

The sound of Sam's running gradually faded after he heard Jacob's command and had no choice but to obey right away.

Jacob's head was now resting over hers as her face was still buried in his shoulder. They had ended up with their bodies curled in toward each other and almost intertwined on the ground as he clung desperately to her, his only chance. The closeness was unbearable. Even as she had other things so much more vital to worry about and focus on in this moment, she was just a little aware of it. All of this, drinking his blood after swearing to herself she would never taste it, all of it, felt too easy and too right, her instincts trying to tell her something.

A small feeling of panic started to flame in her because there seemed to be no end to it. His blood that was coming out from the wound still didn't taste all clean. Without completely accepting the idea yet and what it meant she might have to do, she started to realize the venom might have already circulated through his body too much for her to be able to get all of it out with just some of his blood. If she would have to take it all...

Just then his breathing began to relax a little and she felt his hands both loosen their grip on her, and soon she realized that the pain must have been going away. Then his blood she tasted was finally clean, coming out completely thin and fluid. She slid her hand out of his and then tore herself away from him, groaning with the effort it took, and buried her face into her left arm on the ground beside him, her breaths coming out in quick panting. After recovering enough, calming down and returning completely to herself, she sat back up as he rolled onto his back. His eyes were glazed with tears, or so she thought she saw for a second before he blinked and his eyes rolled to the side to look at her.

"Are you alright?" Bella asked in a strained voice.

He managed a small nod. When he spoke, it sounded like it was hurting him and taking a lot of effort to talk. "Yeah. Just pretty banged up. She broke my ankle—and a few of my ribs—I think. It'll be a little while before I can go back in."

"Jane? It was her?"

"Yeah. Shortie." He laughed bitterly for a second and then groaned from the pain it made his ribs cause him.

She had to wonder if he could even go back into the fight at all. She'd had to drink a lot of blood. He must have felt more than a little faint, and she didn't know if that could actually weaken a werewolf.

She quickly reached for his jeans where they were lying close to his feet, placing them over him so he could reach them. "I really need to go back, Jacob," she said nervously, listening for the faint sounds of the battle far away. "Will you…?"

"Yeah, go," he said. "They think I'm done for; they won't come this way."

She started to stand up, but first he grabbed hold of her arm to keep her there another moment; he pulled her down toward him so she would look back at him and before she knew it or either of them was sure how it happened their faces had ended up within an inch of each other. Her cool breath falling on him made the hairs on the back of his neck stand alertly, waking up his whole body as abruptly as ice water poured on somebody sleeping, and sent a shiver down his whole spine. He was so arrested by the sudden strong sensation for a second that he did not immediately talk.

Then he just whispered, "Be careful, honey."

He dropped his hand from her arm. She just looked down at his face for one more second and then stood up, turning to go.

She had only gone a few steps away from him and not started running off yet when she froze in her tracks, going completely still. Jacob kept his head held up to look around the forest in front of them, trying to figure out what had made her stop, but could only look back at her in confusion.

"Bella?" he asked.

After standing still like this for a long and unsettlingly silent moment, she started to slowly, unsurely step backwards, returning to his side, and then she kneeled on the ground beside him again. All the while her face stayed staring forward, her eyes focused on something far away he could not see.

He heard her take a long, deep breath. "Jacob," she said in almost a whisper, sounding like she was struggling to keep her voice reasonably calm and level. "Stay right here. Don't try to do anything."

His eyes slowly grew wide as he started to understand. "Somebody's coming," he assumed.

"Yes," she said. "…We're being watched."

"_Shit_," he whispered, looking back in the direction she had been staring, not appearing to be at all eager to just stay in place and do nothing.

"Listen to me," she said, still very quiet and trying to stay calm—to make_ him _stay calm. "You can't do anything to help me. You're not going to be able to defend yourself again yet. You_ cannot_ phase. I might have to do something I can't let the others see."

He looked at her with terrified eyes and started shaking his head vigorously, a tiny and weak movement. His voice came out shaky and uncertain. "Bell..."

"Please," she begged, her tone still controlled but now with an obvious note of desperate emotion. "Jacob. Trust me."

The two who Bella had seen moving in the distance were getting close. She rose to her feet again and walked forward a little just before the short figure of Jane came into full view in the moonlight as she stepped out of the shadows. Then she was followed closely by Alec, walking up a few feet to the right of her. Jane was staring down at Jacob with a completely baffled expression.

"I thought you said you finished the Alpha," Alec said to her, sounding confused.

"That can't be him," Jane said in disbelief, lips flying quickly. "It must be the other one you were after—the gray one."

"No. Antonia and I just killed the gray one."

Everything seemed to freeze. Bella could not believe for a moment she had heard him right. A gray wolf. Surely they would have called Leah the female or just the small one. Which left…

Paul. He and Jared had left the rest of the fight. She blinked her eyes slowly a moment, trying to handle the heavy, poisonous weight that was suddenly inside her. She impulsively wanted to steal a look behind her at Jacob to see his face, but didn't dare look away from the two enemies she was facing.

Jane was now looking back and forth from her to Jacob, who looked quite weakened but was obviously in no grave state now. She was perhaps starting to piece it together, as unbelievable as it must have seemed. Her eyes settled on Bella's face with such a contemptuous look that it seemed she should have been able to feel her eyes burning holes in her.

"_Impossible_," she said furiously. For a moment her eyes filled with even stronger anger and frustration, and Bella knew she was trying hopelessly just once again to use her powers on her. On Jane's strangely innocent-looking face, the disappointment it caused her that her efforts obviously still had no effect reminded her a little of a spoiled child pouting and having a fit because she wasn't getting her way.

"Do not be so distraught," Alec said to Jane in a light tone and with a short laugh, his young voice sounding so deceptively harmless and pleasant. "It looks like he is all yours now."

This did seem to cheer her up; she suddenly lowered her eyes back down to Jacob with a cruel smile starting to take the place of the hateful look on her face. Bella knew exactly what she was looking forward to doing to him and could tell as Jane started taking a first advancing step in his direction that in just a fraction of a second he would be writhing in pain…

A fierce growl ripped out from Bella's throat as she leaned forward into a ready position, stepping a little to the side to put herself directly between Jacob and Jane. The threatening sound made Jane stop in her tracks, and both she and Alec looked at Bella with such alarmed looks it was like they had almost forgotten she was there.

"Mrs. Cullen," Alec said to her with a small smile that almost looked sincerely friendly. The way he said her name somehow sounded condescending. "This is foolish. You can run. I would not take any pleasure in hurting you."

"_I_ would," Jane said with a look that somehow perfectly melded together sadistic joy and pure rage. She now seemed a little amused that Bella was actually going to try to stand in their way. They both thought they had her cornered.

But Bella could feel the dark, simple part of her mind taking over, the part that made all of her completely alert to every sensation around her. A hunter. A territorial and protective animal. A killing machine. She let herself go to it all, her easiest inclinations, knowing she could not afford to think any more than she had to, just act. As she prepared herself, her hands clenched into tight fists at her sides.

Someone was dead already. Only one that she knew of. Maybe more.

But they were not going to have him. They were not going to have him...

Jane had looked back behind Bella toward Jacob, and this time as she started to go toward him again she abruptly stopped on her own. Her look of excitement as she was eager to finally kill the werewolf pack's leader became a little more mild and uncertain.

"Jane?" Alec asked, raising an eyebrow and looking to the side at her to try to see what was wrong.

Bella only stood still staring down at her, all throbbing fear and anticipation, starting to fill with something that burned so excrutiatingly it was as if she knew right now how it really felt to be under her power.

Jane's eyes were looking directly at nothing as her mood very visibly intensified, as if she was realizing something that excited her in a heated, volatile way. Suddenly she turned her head to her right to look at Alec, and her lovely young face had become contorted and ugly with a sudden raging determination and anger. Not her own.

He looked back at her with gradually widening, shocked eyes, knowing that look on her face very well but confused to see it directed at him. Then Bella could tell the moment he was suddenly gripped with an uncertain fear, and he just barely started to take a step back away from her. "_Ja—?_"

His speech was cut off as his whole body jerked forward and he fell right to the ground, yelling out in pain.

Bella let it last for just a couple seconds, and then as Jane really seemed to have forgotten her and Jacob and was still looking only at Alec, she threw herself at her and easily pinned her to the ground. The growls and snarls that erupted between them echoed against the night sky as loudly as rounds of bullets. Alec was then released from the pain, but he was too confused for a moment while he still lay on the ground, trying to understand if his sister had really betrayed him.

Jane was so much smaller than Bella. Once she had her, she had her. She struggled wildly to try to break free and get off the ground and snapped at Bella with her teeth but kept missing, and soon the child's face filled with a chilling, possessed fear as she continued to be unable to get away. As her voice was accompanied by the deafening sounds of her body being torn apart that were almost like separate shrieks, she screamed for Alec. She screamed for Aro. She started to just scream wordlessly, begging for it not to be real, her voice shrill and silver in the uncaring dark.

Alec finally got on his feet, but in an instant Bella had him helpless and writhing on the ground again; Jane did not have to be looking at him to hurt him. She was even easier to control now. She was not thinking, and she had become just as scared as Bella. The little girl was burning, dying, hating everyone and cursing the entire merciless world she was a part of, not caring where she directed her anger as long as someone else felt the flames. Her desperate screams continued until the end, suddenly cut off when there was a horrible grating sound as Bella tore her head away from what was left of the rest of her body.

When she stood up completely erect again and dropped Jane's head to the ground, it made a heavy thud like a filled helmet. Alec was still on the ground, his face mangled with terror and anguish as he looked from the parts of Jane's destroyed body to her. She darted forward toward him as he started to get up on his feet, and then before she reached him he vanished.

All the sudden it was very quiet. Bella turned to look back at Jacob, totally still and calm now, and saw that he looked completely confounded by all he had just seen. His eyes looked vague and dead somehow, like he was feeling too much to express any one thing, but the way he was completely still sitting up on his elbows looking at her was enough to convey his shock. For the first time ever, she thought she might have some understanding of why Edward had been so nervous talking to her again after she had watched him kill Victoria.

She just kept staring right back at him. She wiped her tongue around the outside of her upper teeth and swallowed, tasting blood.

She had been turned into a complete monster. Only love could do this even to someone like her.


	9. VIII: requiem

chapter **VIII** requiem

* * *

The sky started filling with echoes of distant howls that sounded like despaired crying. Bella looked around, listening carefully and starting to look very perplexed. It seemed all the other sounds she had been able to hear from far away before were dying down.

She walked back over to Jacob and kneeled by him. He spoke before she could say anything.

"I guess you've been keeping a lot from us," he said, attempting to use a light tone.

"What?" she said.

He looked over toward Jane's dismembered remains, only briefly, like it bothered him to acknowledge them. "What did you do?"

She sighed. "Maybe I can...explain it to you later. I'm not sure if I should tell you yet."

He said nothing to that. She shook her head a little, sighing again.

"I still can't believe she actually bit you," she said.

"I know," he said tiredly, falling back to lie his head back down on the ground. "She was insane, that one. And they're all really desperate to do me in. Sam, too. It wasn't his fault, you know," he made sure to say as he was thinking of him. "Jared was too busy with that female with the long hair and I thought I had a shot at Alec because I'd noticed Jane wasn't with him anymore. I told him to leave me just for a minute because somebody had to help Paul—"

His words cut right off as if saying the name left him suddenly unable to speak, and Bella could see the pain registering sharply in him as he remembered. As his expression changed completely and he closed his eyes a moment, taking a quick and shuddering breath as if feeling a sudden physical sting, she felt an ache of sadness and impulsively put her hand to his face, gently brushing her thumb against his cheekbone and then smoothing some of his hair away from his warm, lightly sweating forehead.

When he opened his eyes again, they held a look of weakened endurance, and it was obvious to her he could not stand to say anything more about him. "Then later it was me with Jane all by myself," he went on. "After just playing around for a while she finally started tearing me up and when Sam finally made it back to me he was able to take her by surprise and grab her from behind. I guess since she'd wasted a lot of time just torturing me for fun before she even got down to business she wasn't about to give up on me and leave me alive, so she held onto me just long enough to sink her teeth in a second…It was…" He shook his head a little. "I didn't feel a thing. I didn't even realize she'd done it until a minute later…Holy _crap_…"

He looked up at her face and found her starting to look away from him, part of her attention now on something else.

"What is it now?" Jacob asked her.

She slowly shook her head. "I don't know. I'm sure I should probably be getting back out there now, but this is so strange. I don't…_hear _anything."

But just as soon as she said it, there came the faint calling of someone's voice far away.

_"Bella!"_

She looked back down at Jacob. "I don't get the feeling anybody else is going to come after you," she said.

He shook his head, agreeing, and she stood up.

"Let me find out what's going on," she called back to him before disappearing into the shadows of the trees.

She had not run far before she heard a voice again. "Bella! Isabella Cullen!"

"Emmett?" she called. She looked in the direction his voice was coming from and could see him in the distance, turning in her direction after she called and seeing her.

"Oh,_ there_ you are, girl," he said with heavy relief.

Right away she said in a high voice, "Edward—is he—?"

He pointed to his left and a little bit behind him. When she looked that way, she saw a figure a little farther away just now becoming near and visible enough for her to recognize him.

Her breath fell out in a grateful sigh. She found she couldn't move at first. Then he saw her, too, and in an instant they were both running. When they met they collided together into an embrace so fast their bodies made a light crash. The moment was beyond any words like "Thank God," and instead of saying a thing at first they just held each other, grabbing each other's hair, breathing deeply.

"Could you tell what was happening?" she asked.

He stepped back to look down at her face and shook his head. "Right after you left he wandered just a little farther and then he was too out of range for me to be able to hear his thoughts the rest of the time. Good lord...The last thing I knew was that Jane _bit _him..."

"He's okay now," she said in a suddenly awkward and removed voice.

"Yes," he said, glancing back in the direction she had come from, and then his face showed something new as if he had just spotted something very strange far away. As he was quiet a moment, Bella wondered what he was probably seeing Jacob remember now that he had come closer to him.

But then Edward sighed and said, "That isn't very informative."

"What?"

"Well, now Sam has found him and they are speaking of something completely different that happened. You will just have to give me the whole story later, I suppose. But—" He stopped a second, looking confused. "What is that?"

As he listened to something going through either Sam's or Jacob's head, he started looking a little shocked. He looked right down at Bella, who for some reason was starting to feel self-conscious and uncomfortable.

"You...killed _Jane?_" he asked.

She stared back at him a few seconds before nodding.

"Well," he sighed. "Perhaps that begins to explain it."

"What?" she asked.

"They suddenly decided to retreat for now. Demetri and a couple others had finally managed to get me chased away from the rest of the fight by working together, so I never knew anything they were thinking before most of them were suddenly gone. They got out of there so fast I think that was intentional. But some of the others told me they saw Alec come back and have Aro touch him so he could tell him something right away. Immediately after that he made them all clear out except for one who he just ordered to stay behind to give us a message. They have something they unexpectedly need to discuss together and then they want to meet with us again at 8:00 tomorrow. _Just_ us."

"Not the pack?" she asked.

"Right. At our house."

Bella shook her head, completely bewildered. Edward stroked his fingers against her face with a sorry look. "You look awful, love," he said.

"I feel awful," she sighed. "Do you think…Could this be good?"

He shrugged. "It could be good and it could be bad. I haven't even had the chance to ask Alice if she has seen anything useful yet."

"Well, let's go then," Bella said urgently, and she walked past him to start to run back.

"Bella, wait!" Edward took her arm and stopped her, and then started going with her at a more moderate pace. "You had better be careful. Some of the wolves do not quite understand that Jacob is safe. They…did not really know what to make of the last thing they saw of him through Sam's eyes."

"…Oh," she said in a dull, careless tone after she realized what he was trying to warn her about.

As she started trying to walk very quickly, Edward once again seemed nervous and ran to catch up with her. "There is something else. Please, just let me tell you—"

But she found out soon enough, ungracefully coming to a sudden stop once she was not far from the edge of the clearing and saw something off to her left that made her feel too weak to move.

An enormous mass of light tan fur lay in a profusely spread puddle of blood. The stench was sickening. Seth's eyes were closed and he was completely motionless. His body somehow looked bizarre lying there, abnormally long, and as her eyes took in the entire sight in more detail it only got more horrific as she realized the body was ripped apart into two completely separate pieces.

She whipped back around, burying her face into Edward's chest with a kind of contained scream she made in her throat without opening her mouth.

"Paul, too," he said sadly as he wrapped his arms around her.

She nodded quickly. "I know…"

She couldn't believe it. It wasn't fair. After everything else…

Edward gently urged her on, and they walked out to the moonlit grass with his arm around her waist a little protectively.

Everyone from the pack had changed back from wolves and were gathered close together. As they approached, some of them immediately fixed their eyes on Bella with dark, disgusted looks.

Brady crossed his arms, burning her with his gaze. "I guess Paul was right about her," he said bitterly.

"Shut up," Embry said in an exhausted, slightly raspy voice as he wiped one of his eyes. "You know Jake's fine now."

"So _he _says," Collin said, looking at Edward.

"Knock it off," said Sam tiredly, just now walking back to the group with his eyes looking very bloodshot. "I just talked to him. He'd be completely hosed if she hadn't been there."

"Then where is he?" Brady asked.

"Getting better," he answered. "He can't walk again yet and he feels too dizzy to stand up anyway."

Bella saw that Jared was the only one actually crying right now, containing quiet, occasional sobs as he rocked back and forth on his heels kneeling on the ground, Embry sitting next to him with one hand strongly holding his shoulder. Even as the others held themselves together, there was something completely wrong behind the tone all of them spoke with. It seemed to take visible effort for the ones who were standing now not to just collapse. As Sam kept talking quietly to Quil it was with a vacant, almost careless voice. Others were saying absolutely nothing, looking almost completely unaware of their surroundings at the moment.

Leah was sitting down cross-legged and hunched over, somehow looking a lot smaller than usual. Her left arm might have been broken, for she was holding it in against herself, gently supported with her other arm, and it was shaking a little like it hurt. Bella felt an unbearable weight of remorse as she looked at her face, but at the same time it was impossible to look away. She seemed to be holding back pain and rage that was beyond tears or any adequate kind of outward expression, her mouth held together in a tight, straight line and all of her features looking as hard as steel.

She and Edward both could not help but watch her as Carlisle approached her and leaned over a little to say something. "Would you like me to look at that?" he asked, nodding toward her arm.

She did not seem to have heard him talk to her. She did not even look up at his face.

As if she just might need him to further explain, he added, "Just so I can check to see that it appears to be healing right."

Leah just kept staring at a far-off point in the distance, but for a second her face looked a little aggressive. "Don't touch me," she said quietly.

Carlisle frowned passively and stood up straight again. He exchanged a regretful look with Edward when they met eyes, and then he walked over to where Esme, Alice, and Jasper were. Edward and Bella followed.

Alice was shaking her head and telling the others, "I don't see anything. They obviously have a lot to weigh before they even come close to a decision, whatever it's about."

"Jane is dead, you know," Edward said seriously.

They all looked at him with shocked expressions. Clearly, nobody else had realized. Emmett and Rosalie, who had been near but not standing as part of the group, walked right over to join them when they heard him say that.

"It seems to be the reason they retreated," Edward continued.

"Way to go," Emmett said to him half-enthusiastically.

He shook his head. "It wasn't me," he said, and lowered his eyes meaningfully down at Bella's head for a moment.

"Oh…" Emmett, along with the others, just looked a little awed.

"So either we have actually managed to scare the Volturi a little," Carlisle said in a bewildered tone, "or we have just made them very mad."

Bella's face became worried. "Should I…not have done it? I really had to—"

Edward actually laughed a little. "Please. Do not be absurd."

Sam came over to them, looking very troubled and seeming to struggle to figure out how to say what he had to. "I don't know what…We have to do something about the…about Seth and Paul."

It sounded hard enough to say as it was, and Bella realized he could not manage to make any references to their "bodies."

"Yes. We can take care of that for you," Carlisle offered. "If you wish."

Sam nodded. "Yeah. Thanks."

As he turned back away, Jasper said, "I suppose we have two vampires to get rid of, too."

Edward nodded; Gianna's body parts were still scattered in the middle of the open area. Before he was about to say something else, Bella interrupted him.

"Someone let me use their lighter," she said.

Some of them looked over at her a little strangely, as if she had seemed too eager to do it.

"What?" she said uncomfortably, trying to use a dryly humorous tone. "I killed my first vampire. I guess it makes sense I should be the one to finish the whole job."

The dark, dead-sounding voice she was using made Edward look at her with his eyes full of concern. But he did not say anything before finally reaching into his pocket to take out the lighter he had brought and handing it to her.

She smoothed some of her fingers over the top of it, turning it in her hand as she thought. "I think I should go to him," she said to Edward when she finally looked back up at his face. "I said…I was going to tell him something. But you shouldn't bother waiting for me. I'll just come home as soon as I can."

He looked at her closely for a long moment. "Are you sure that's a good idea?" he asked in a careful tone.

When she realized what he was asking, she nodded. "After what I just had to do, I think it should be pretty easy being around him now."

"…Alright," Edward said, almost in a sigh. Then he leaned over to kiss her. He held it a long time, wrapping his arms firmly around her waist. Then he pulled away and said quietly, "I love you."

"I love you, too," she said back.

As Bella walked away from where most of her family was standing together, she stopped as she noticed Leah again, watching her once more. Her arm appeared to be fine now and she was sitting completely still. As Bella watched, her brow creased together a little and her lips started to tremble as they stayed shut tight together. Almost imperceptibly, her breath began to quicken just a little.

Bella noticed that Sam was staring at her from behind. He seemed to be the only other person in the pack who acknowledged her now at all. He slowly, carefully started approaching her with quiet steps, coming to stand on the left of her but stopping still a foot back away. Bella saw Leah's eyes flicker to the side for a brief moment, long enough to spot his legs out of the corner of her eye and maybe realize who was standing there. At first it seemed Sam was not going to do anything. Then he lowered his hand down to her, stopping and hesitating a second when he was an inch from touching her, and then reached toward her head.

She moved so fast when his fingers barely touched her hair it was as if they had burned and made her flinch away. The minute she felt the delicate touch at the back of her head, just the cautious start of whatever attempted gesture of comfort he had meant it to be, she darted forward, sprung right up onto her feet and ran, ran, her legs and arms moving with a sudden passionate anger. And then a moment later she leaped forward and instantly exploded into the gray wolf, running off and escaping everything behind her much faster and leaving ruined shreds of white fabric flying behind her and falling to the ground almost like flakes of snow.

Bella was unable to move or look away from the direction she had seen Leah disappear in for a long time, feeling like the entire world was now too much to bear, all heavy weight crushing her under it. It was not fair. It was so completely without reason.

But it had cause. This was the thought that had her so paralyzed for a moment.

Four years ago. Edward lying on top of her and softly kissing her neck before he was going to finally do it, Bella feeling terrified and excited at the same time but safe with him as she grabbed tight handfuls of his shirt on his back to prepare herself. Goodbye. Life thrown away like it was nothing. Life thrown away...

She did not find that Sam had been staring off in the same direction until he moved, almost walking past her toward the few other vampires who had not left to go home yet before he stopped and looked at her, seeming to just then notice her there.

When Bella turned her head to look at him he asked weakly, "Do you have a phone on you?"

* * *

When Bella came back to him, Jacob had moved a little from where he had been before so he was no longer soaking in his own blood. He had gotten his pants on and was lying down with one of his hands covering part of his face, his knees bent up and resting together.

When she started gathering all the pieces of Jane's body together into a pile, he rolled his head to the side to look at her, but it was a while before either of them spoke. When she had the whole pile burning, she stepped away and sat down near him. The fire filled the air with a thick, potently sweet scent like flowery incense, sending a thick stream of dark smoke into the sky where it joined the smoke from three other fires in the distance where the remains of another vampire and two werewolves were being burned.

"Emily sends her love to everyone," she said. "Sam called her."

He nodded. "Do you guys have any idea what this is about?" he asked. His voice sounded colorless and numb.

She shook her head. "It seems that them losing Jane has changed things."

"In a way that's bad for us or good for us?"

"It could be either. Maybe they're actually willing to give up now that they know we're…serious. Or maybe now that they know what they're up against they need to meet and talk a lot more about how to do this, and they're just going to be more aggressive with us now."

"…So I guess they must know what you can do now."

She was frozen a second and then she gave a long sigh. "Yes. I was meaning to stop Alec, too. But now he's told them everything and I'm sure they will have figured it out. That's bad. It was lucky I was able to keep it a secret; even Edward doesn't know anything about it. And I needed to have that. It won't work as easily on anybody who knows I can do it."

"How exactly does it work?" he asked. "Can you make somebody do_ anything?_ Like it's…mind control?"

She shrugged. "That makes it sound a lot more powerful than it is," she said. "It's more like I can make somebody_ think _anything. I can literally make someone's thoughts deceive them, or put a strong momentary inclination in their head. But part of their mind is always still their own, so usually I have to be subtle about it for it to work. It's easy to use while fighting somebody because I can just keep planning their next moves and that involves really simple kinds of thoughts. But I'm sure I couldn't make some random person I see inside a restaurant stand up and decide to go outside and jump off a bridge." She started shaking her head, overtaken with a disturbing thought. "Jane, though…She seemed especially easy to manipulate. She was different from other people somehow."

"Maybe because children have more impressionable minds," Jacob suggested dryly.

She frowned, only more disturbed now. "That's terrible…"

He looked at her a moment and then ran his hand along his ribs on his left side. Seeming to decide all the bones there were all finally restored right, he grunted tiredly as he took the effort to sit up and look more closely at her face. "You okay?" he asked.

As she kept thinking about it and shaking her head she was starting to look almost panicked. Her words then began to spill out almost much too fast for him to understand, hardly making sense anyway. "Jake, I couldn't—They were—I couldn't watch them torture and kill you. Jane. She was..."

His eyes opened wide with sudden shock. "Bella, I really don't think anybody's _blaming _you—"

"They'd gotten Paul," she went on as if she didn't even hear his words. "Alec. He killed Paul."

"Honey, I know," he said, his voice suddenly very quiet and scratching in his throat a little as his eyes became terribly sad.

"I was so angry. I—I wanted to hurt them. And I wish I didn't have to—now I wish—but when I was doing it I—_enjoyed_ it. I enjoyed hurting them. And it was easy. I was so scared, but then it was so _easy_..."

"Okay. Bells..." He spoke very gently, naturally reaching toward her and smoothing his hand through her hair at the back of her head. "Calm down. You're just shaken up after all of that. It happens to the best of us."

She shook with a single, low laugh. "Oh, really?"

"Yeah. Quil would kill me if he knew I told you this, but he got pretty sick right after that fight with the newborns. Of course, that might have been because there was the extremely disgusting smell of burning vampire bits all over the place…"

She sighed loudly. Only Jacob would be able to feign a real sense of humor at a time like this.

"You don't understand," she went on, sounding more controlled now. "You don't know…Edward told me once about Jane's past. About how she and Alec were changed."

He just regarded her patiently now. "They weren't like you?" he asked.

Once she realized what he was asking, she shook her head quickly. "No! They didn't _choose_ to be turned into…Of _course _not."

"I get the feeling, though, that they never would have been strongly opposed to the idea," he said a little darkly.

"Well, they were _kids_."

He shrugged, seeming to allow that.

"When they were humans, Aro had been paying attention to them for a while," she explained, "because they seemed to show a lot of potential for being very powerful as vampires. I don't know how exactly they were so gifted even as humans, but they must have been pretty extraordinary because they were accused of witchcraft and burned at stakes when they were just children. Aro had to save them and this was why he ended up having to turn them when they were still so young. Carlisle is sure that Jane must have felt nothing but intense hatred and anger in all the last moments of her human life as she burned, and this is why she turned into such a sadistic creature. Alec might have just felt unbelievably scared. That pain they were going through at the time they were turned was what gave them their talents. I just can't imagine…if the kind of things you would feel while that was happening to you were still the most dominant emotions you had in your last moments as a human…if _that_ was crystallized as an irremovable, prominent part of yourself for eternity…"

Jacob was just looking off into the air thoughtfully as he listened.

Bella drew her legs in against her and held her arms around her knees, her face turning a little angry. "I _hated_ her," she said with very real contempt. "The first time I met her I watched her hurt Edward like that just because she could. Because she thought it was fun. Even though she was never able to do that to me, I always found her absolutely terrifying. She was…_horrible_. And yet now that she's dead…now that _I _killed her…I don't know. She didn't ask for any of that to happen to her. I don't know if underneath everything she was still just a child who had so much unthinkable harm done to her."

He was quiet a while longer before he finally said something in response. "Well," he said, "at least she's not stuck that way anymore. God, I don't know if I can think of a more messed up way to be than that. Never being able to even _grow up_, I mean…"

She nodded.

"And anyway, it's not like there was anything else you could have done."

"I know," she said.

He let out a long, exhausted breath and lay back on the ground again. "I wish I could have talked to all my brothers," he said. Then, as his face seemed to show him registering some kind of regret, perhaps from uttering just the word "brothers," he started to look very troubled. "How bad was it for them? For…Leah?"

Bella did not know what to tell him. She could only shake her head sadly, and the look in her eyes seemed to tell him everything, because he then looked away from her.

Then, thinking of something a little different, she said, "A lot of them were kind of pissed at me."

"What?" he said, managing to put enough of an emotional tone in his voice to sound confused.

"Well…I guess they just thought I saw you like that and stopped for a snack or something."

Realizing what she meant, he slowly rolled his eyes.

"Or else maybe they just thought I was a little too eager to help you…."

"Die," he finished quietly when she couldn't seem to say it. He sighed slowly, and just the deep breath sounded like it took a lot out of him. "Don't worry about them. I'm sure if you'd mentioned that you just took care of the pain machine they would have been a lot nicer."

She gave a short, empty laugh.

Jacob was starting to look a little angry. "I really wish they wouldn't be like that, though," he said. "I know you guys don't even have to be doing this."

Her eyes started to go a little wide, as if the statement was too close to something she could not stand to acknowledge. "No," she said quickly. "It's not like that. I really don't care…"

He only looked doubtful. "Yeah, I know Edward said all this bull about how you owe us for making it possible for everybody to survive that attack from the redhead's army. But I know a lot of this…has to do with you."

She started shaking her head, her eyes closed shamefully.

"What's the matter with you?" He sat up to look directly at her once again, appearing completely puzzled. "Look, I just know that none of the other guys are ever going to suck it up and be able to actually say thanks to any of you, so I—"

"Oh no," she moaned, bowing her face down with her hands in her hair, clawing at it a little madly. "Oh, Jacob, if you knew…"

And she realized then, as she might already have known the instant she decided she was going to come back here and talk to him, that she could not stand to keep carrying it around inside for one more moment. It was the worst possible time for it to finally come out, but the truth had become a burning hot coal destroying her from the inside more and more the longer it stayed in.

Jacob was staring at her quietly, starting to look a little worried. "What is it?" he asked.

She made herself look back at his face. "I…haven't told you something._ We_ haven't told you something."

"About all of this, you mean?" he asked.

She hesitated a few seconds and then nodded quickly. "The others…Please don't think they…It's not like they meant to deceive you, they just don't think it matters. They keep trying to tell me this and that I shouldn't feel responsible at all. That the Volturi don't actually care about it and it was just their excuse for going through with it rather than the real reason…"

Jacob's face was starting to look carefully guarded. "I don't understand what you're telling me," he said flatly. Something about his tone suggested that he was a little afraid to understand it.

She had to look completely away from him to be able to finish. Then she could only just blurt it out quickly. "They keep trying to tell me it _doesn't_ matter, that it's not important. But no matter how you look at it the truth is that they probably never would have bothered with this if Edward hadn't already jeopardized everything that keeps the peace between the wolves and his family…for me."

At first he kept staring off into the air for so many long seconds, not reacting at all, that it almost seemed like he might not have heard it. Then she heard him gradually starting to breathe more heavily, as if it was taking strong efforts to control himself, and he leaned over weakly with his head hanging and just staring at the ground. Finally he brought his hands up and held his face in them, muttering into them, "Tell me you're _kidding_…"

Bella looked at him with a miserable, pained look. She had no words. Saying "I'm sorry" at this point seemed like it would sound so lamely inadequate.

She just said in a voice that barely escaped her, "I can't tell you how...Jacob, please...Please say you can forgive me."

His hands lowered to the ground, tightening into fists. He sounded barely able to form any words as he only forced out, "I…"

It was as if he had only just now been told who they had lost and was trying to process everything all over again, and Bella felt so completely helpless it was like she wasn't even there. His breathing as heightened and frantic as ever, he bent over with his head almost meeting the ground, collapsing under the despair. With his fists still clenched and his eyes squeezed shut, he could only release all of it in a low, wordless sound of overwhelming anger he made through his clenched teeth, a roar tearing right out from the deepest part of him that shook with such a strong hint of vulnerability and pain that it hardly sounded aggressive at all. The way he trembled all over for a brief moment made it look a little like he was struggling to control himself before he unintentionally phased.

As Bella watched him she badly wanted to touch him, to try to _do something_, and at the same time was almost as terrified of him now as she had been of anything else all night. All she could think to do was say something again. "Oh God. Say you can forgive me. Otherwise I don't know how I can—"

He sprung back up to face her and cut off her words as he roughly grabbed one of her arms. His face was not at all himself as he looked at her piercingly. "Tell_ me _something," he said quickly, wildly. "If you could go back and make that choice again, knowing this time what it could mean, would you—?"

"No," she gasped, interrupting him as soon as she knew what he was asking. "Don't. I can't answer that, I_ can't._"

"Dammit!" He grabbed both of her shoulders, forcing her to directly face him, and loosely shook her once. "_Tell _me!"

"It won't make you feel any better to hear it!" she said beggingly. "Please. You already know."

"I_ don't_ know!"

"Yes." The answer released itself from her softly, in a kind of exhausted sigh as she closed her eyes. He let go of her so suddenly she stopped sitting up and sank back onto her legs. And she opened her eyes, not denying now, and said, "Of course. Of course I'd take it back. What do you _think?_"

He wiped a hand across his eyes, letting out one more heavy breath as he started to calm back down. "You're such a liar, Bella," he then said with a tone of dark humor.

"I'm so sorry," she moaned. "I knew I should have told you. I hated that we had kept it from all of you."

"That's not what I mean. You told me you couldn't live without him. You thought you didn't _have _a choice."

Now she had absolutely nothing to say. She just curled her legs up against her again, her form becoming small and drawn together next to his much larger figure, feeling tiny and completely worthless, despicable.

Then Jacob sighed, and his face had now softened, looking like the person she knew again. When he spoke again he did not sound angry at all anymore. "But I guess it took something like this for you to see that you actually could have made another choice."

After they both sat in a dead silence for a while, he looked to the side at her and saw all the anguished guilt on her face. He said softly, "Bella. Hey. Listen, I'm not angry with you, okay?"

"Are you sure?" she asked dryly, not sounding like she could care.

"No, not at _you_." He sighed. "I…I'm sorry. It's just that…Can you understand? It's just really hard for me to hear that. That if you'd only stayed with me, then everything could have been…then Paul and Seth would be…"

Bella looked down at her feet sadly. "I know," she muttered.

"Really, I don't blame you for this. Of course I forgive you. It's not your fault. I mean…you didn't know. I know you didn't know."

She shook her head. "I don't know if it's really any excuse. It's not like I would really blame you if couldn't forgive me. It's amazing you don't _hate _me."

He looked at her like she had said something unbelievably insane. He said quietly, "How could I ever hate you?"

"I'm really not a good person, Jake. And you should know that better than anyone."

"Well, maybe I do know you better than anyone," he said lightly. "I wouldn't argue with that..."

"Don't you realize?" she said, looking incredibly frustrated. "I _did_ know what it could have cost when I chose the life I did, I just didn't want to think about it. And I think I finally realized this and _had _to think about it when I started seeing you again. That was what it took to make me see...But I still haven't wanted to acknowledge it. I've just been pushing it to the back of my head ever since then to keep it from driving me insane. Until now..."

"What do you mean?" he asked. "Why since you started seeing me?"

"Because I should have _known_," she said. "I have no excuse! If it wasn't Paul or Seth, if this entire problem with the Volturi showing up never even happened, it could have been somebody else. It could have been_ you. _You could have been the one to pay for me and Edward being together forever. Oh my God!" Her eyes went wide as she visibly began to realize the full magnitude of it as she said it. "There has_ always _been the danger that I'll make a mistake and hurt somebody, don't you see? But I never gave it any thought until I saw you again and I actually almost..." She shook her head and shuddered, hardly able to stand thinking about it. "And even the whole time that I kept saying, 'It doesn't make any sense, it doesn't make any sense'—because you're a _werewolf_, for God sakes—even all that time, it seems like there was this small voice in my head that did realize, 'Of course.' Of course it would be you. If I unintentionally killed _you_ because of what I wanted to become, not just anybody, it would actually make perfect sense, if you think about it. Because maybe I was being punished this way. _This _is what it took to make me see what I did."

Jacob sat in silence for so long she almost thought he was never going to say anything more. But finally he pulled one thought out of the thousands that must have been going through his head and said softly, "Yet here I am, only still alive because of you."

"Barely."

He looked to the side at her, his expression a little curious. "How hard was that to do? How close did I come to just…?"

She shook her head. "I won't even try to tell you. I don't know…If I had taken much longer at all to find you it could have easily been too late."

After taking that in for a moment, he just nodded. "Well, I guess if you can't help but start seeing things that way, it's a good thing you're not religious anyway."

It actually got a short, surprised laugh out of her.

"Though if you were," he added thoughtfully, "I don't really see how you could have made the choice to become immortal in the first place."

"Oh, come on," she said with a hint of annoyance. "Don't tell me you and _Edward _are going to start seeing things the same way. That seems like it has to be a sign of the apocalypse or something."

"What are you talking about?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

"He has this whole thing about how we're all the wretched eternally damned who have lost their souls. Monsters that God looks at and only wants to spit on, basically. I don't know. Maybe we are."

He smirked a little. "Well, you have to admit there's nothing very religiously sound about saying, 'No thanks, I think I'd rather live forever than try to go to Heaven.' I mean…people who believe in that stuff would say we all die for a reason, right?"

"Yeah," she sighed. "I guess."

He yawned widely and lay down on his back, crossing one of his feet over the other. "I just don't know if I can see it in such a horrible way," he said. "Or blame you much for it, at least. It's not like those kind of risks that come with it were ever even what_ I _was the most worried about when I was trying to convince you not to go through with it. I didn't really think about all that. I was just scared of you changing yourself like that without thinking it through enough and then having to live to regret it...And I wanted you," he added. "Of course."

"Of course," she echoed in a dull voice.

Everything settled into a calm silence. Soon Jacob closed his eyes.

"Man," he said after a while, so softly it was almost in a whisper. "I don't feel like I can move another inch."

"Just go to sleep for a while, then," Bella said. "I can stay here."

"You don't have to," he murmured.

"It's fine. Do you really want to be alone now?"

He took so long to respond, breathing calmly with his eyes heavily closed, that it seemed at first he had already drifted off to sleep. Then he just whispered, "No."

The night around them felt so surreal and quiet after everything that had happened in the past couple hours. Bella lay back and relaxed on the ground with a few feet between the two of them, looking up at the stars while Jacob sank into a deep, unresponsive sleep beside her. As she stayed this way, finally able to feel a welcome sense of peace for a while, she calmly and freely took in his close scent that was more a comfortable part of her than a disturbance now, and she listened to his heart. She listened to his heart still beating.


	10. IX: non troppo

chapter **IX **non troppo

* * *

The sun rose in the morning with surprising ardor, completely transforming everything beneath it that Bella could see in its light and warmth rather than bringing the kind of lazy dissolving from night into a lighter shade of sky that she was used to the start of another morning in Forks being. A sunny day. Naturally, Alice had not been wrong.

Of course, it was the first thing Jacob noticed as the bright sunlight gradually pried his eyes open not many hours after he had finally been able to sleep. He first looked to his right side, away from Bella and at the sky and the trees surrounding them, and even though the feeling of waking up was something from her murky, intangible past now she thought she recognized in his reaction the disorientation of waking up somewhere that is not your own bed. But as soon as that quickly passed, he went very still, and she could imagine there were other things to settle back into his mind. Things he might not yet be used to that were going to still be true every day he woke up to from now on.

After witnessing him finally waking up, Bella went back to resting the way she had been before, one of her arms stretched up with her head lying back on it and her eyes closed. With her arm up this way it made her shirt come up from her pale midriff a little, and she just lay with her whole body facing the warmth pouring down from the uncovered sun, every part of her skin that was bare feeling it as something very foreign and unusual but pleasant.

She opened her eyes when she heard Jacob move beside her again, and when she turned her head to the side he was upright leaning on his elbow a little and looking at her. He had an expression of slight wonder in his eyes, and she understood why. He had never seen her in the sun.

She turned onto her side as well, facing him, and her expression stayed mild as they looked at each other. "Freaky, huh?" she muttered softly, smirking dryly for a second.

His face did not change as he stared at her a moment longer, casting his eyes briefly away from her face to look down and take in the view of all of her glittering iridescently where her skin was in the light. Then as he looked up and down her whole figure, he seemed to notice other things that looked quite different than when he had last seen them, and he looked around with some surprise at where they were. The little clearing where they remembered so many nightmarish things happening in the dark the night before almost looked like it could not possibly be the same place now. In the illuminating daytime it looked so harmless, even with the signs of the violence that had taken place there still present like the dark spot on the ground with no grass left where Jane's body had been burned and the trails of blood. With everyone gone but just the two of them and everything quiet, it was actually a very peaceful and pretty place.

He then looked down at the grass right around them. He reached out and picked one of the little white flowers that were all over the place, one that was perfectly shaped like nothing had ever touched it. Bella stayed still but her mouth made a delicate smile as he casually reached for her and put it in her hair, tucking it behind her ear where it looked very bright in the sun, completely pure and clean white against her dark hair.

Then he just stared at her this way, as if he had just completed some kind of picture that was missing something, and his face changed almost unnoticeably to hold the smallest tired grin. As soon as she had seen the tiny change in his expression, he relaxed back on the ground again, staring up at the clear sky. She did the same, for a short moment reaching up and gently touching the flower in her hair only once he was no longer watching her.

"Looks like you were able to behave yourself all night," he commented.

She smiled. "Were you actually worried?"

"No. Nothing you haven't been able to handle before, right?" he asked with a teasing edge to his voice. "Though maybe not for a whole night."

Her eyes slowly widened as she was taken completely by surprise. When he looked to the side and saw her expression, he laughed lightly.

"Did you really think I wouldn't be able to tell you'd been there?" he asked.

"I…certainly _worried _you'd be able to," she said, starting to sound a little embarrassed.

He just smiled a little.

She swallowed. "Sorry. I just thought…maybe this whole thing bothered you enough as it was. But the more I'm around you the easier it will get to control myself. It can help me a lot."

He nodded. "I figured it had something to do with that."

She didn't know what to say. "I'm…sorry," she said again. "I know it wasn't right to be sneaking around in your territory like that."

"If I had a problem with it I would have said something," he said. "The only thing is that it's been kind of a pain keeping that from everybody. I know the rules might be kind of out the window at this point anyway and _I_ may not mind, but I just don't know how happy the others would be to know about that."

She nodded. "That's why I didn't mean for you to know."

He gave a solitary, somewhat mocking laugh. "Is that really all? Tell me, is this whole 'singer' business the only reason you've been avoiding me?"

She looked taken aback. "I haven't been _avoiding_ you," she said, thinking that didn't seem like the right way to put it.

"This is the first time we've really been able to talk," he pointed out.

"Well. Long-distance friendship, remember?"

He laughed a little again. "What more harm can it do? Besides, we've been getting ready to go into battle. We might never have gotten another chance."

She sighed in a long breath, getting ready to admit it. "I guess I'm just ridiculous. This whole time we've been preparing ourselves to go into a fight against the most vicious and powerful vampires in the world, what I've been afraid of as much as anything is seeing you again...I was afraid of the way you would look at me now."

He appeared momentarily stricken to hear it so blatantly said out loud at last, but then he smirked darkly. "What a coincidence. I was afraid of the way you would look now."

Neither of them said anything about whether or not it was as they expected. Bella did not tell him that it had been his bitter, angry mask she was fearing the whole time, the face that spat "bloodsucker" and other cutting red words, an even more detached version of it than she was used to. Instead, every time he looked at her it was just_ her _Jacob, the vulnerable and injured one, and this was even worse.

"And I just didn't know…" Bella hesitated, not seeming sure of how to say it. "I didn't know how hard it would be for you. If it would be more fair to just keep my distance."

He was quiet a while, clearly not quite able to refute that. Finally he sighed and said, "Yeah, I know. This isn't how I would have wanted it to be. But actually…I might never have expected it, but now that we can just talk like this…it's good to see you again."

She did not look directly at him, but her face started to look very content after she heard this. Her right hand was lying relaxed on the ground with her palm up, and he took it and squeezed it a moment.

"And I'm really glad you're okay," he added softly.

He seemed to notice something as he kept loosely holding her hand and he lifted it up in his to look at it, seeing the bracelet there on her wrist and the carved wolf still attached to it. He allowed himself a brief, self-contained smile as he dropped her hand again and let go of it. Then he wrinkled his nose with a new thought. "Even if you do_ stink _like nothing else…God, how did I just stay asleep through it all those nights?"

"Probably because_ you_ could sleep through a hurricane demolishing your house," she said in an annoyed tone.

"True."

"Vampires smell amazingly good to_ normal_ humans, you know," she said a little haughtily.

"Really? What about to other vampires?"

She seemed surprised by the question. "They smell…fine."

For some reason he laughed more enthusiastically than she could remember hearing him laugh for a long time.

"Well, I think it's our venom that has that smell to people," she explained. "It's one of the many ridiculously excessive adaptations that makes it easy for us to catch humans. But to me it's just like saliva now."

He sighed. "You know, don't take offense, but I'm kind of glad I'm not attracted to you in that way since I'm a wolf. It's just kind of weird, you know. Feeling drawn to someone because it's their nature to want to have you for lunch."

"But it doesn't bother you that I feel drawn to _you _for the same reason?"

He thought about it a moment. "At least that isn't completely crazy," he decided. "Wanting to eat, as opposed to wanting to get near something that's going to eat you."

She just shrugged.

As she looked away, Jacob was able to just stare at her for a minute, shamelessly taking in the way she looked as she was so close to him. He knew that all he should see was the vacant corpse of the girl he used to know. She was not the soft and warm, vulnerable, clumsy human he had fallen in love with. She had been turned into something that could only hurt him anymore; there was something new and alien in her that _wanted _to hurt him. To him she now might as well be like something made up entirely of broken pieces of glass, all sharp edges like teeth which could only leave him bleeding if he touched her. Even speaking to her now was perhaps ridiculous, only dangerous to him in so many ways.

He knew it would be easier, at least, to be able to see her only in this way. But when she spoke, even though her voice now had a hint of a very smooth texture like gently coursing water that was not familiar to him, it was unmistakably her. Even though she was alarmingly more beautiful, _too _beautiful, so much it was painful to look at her, everything about her still had the same modesty as before.

Maybe he should have been able to despise her just because of his very nature, because of what she was now. She had chosen to join the side of those who were his enemies, to enter a terrifying world that was the Hell of everything supernatural they had both come to know about. But in a strange way, she was still closer to his world than any other girl he might ever get to know.

As he thought about what they had just said again and wondered about something, he started to look a little curious. "How does my blood smell to you, exactly? Sweet?"

"No," she answered. "Not at all, actually. It's almost not even a _nice_ smell. It's kind of bitter, and just really strong, like…coffee, maybe. With you it's so different from the way humans usually smell good to me it's like a similar but different kind of food or something."

He rolled that around in his head a while, looking a little surprised. "So I do still _kind of _smell different to you as a werewolf?"

Her brow drew together, making her look a little confused. "Yeah, I…_guess_."

He shook his head slowly. "Jeez," he sighed. "This is just all kinds of messed up, isn't it?"

She could have a laughed a little because of the way he said it, but it rang a little too true for her to be able to.

"But you're not actually too uncomfortable being right here?" he asked, looking at her closely. She showed absolutely no sign of struggle as he had become used to seeing when she was near him.

"No, it's pretty tolerable right now," she said, "because we've been together for hours." She waited a while before she continued less easily. "Actually, in a weird way it's kind of relieving being close to you…It's hard to describe because at the same time, it's difficult and we have to be careful, and I know it's not the best idea…But while I'm actually here it's easy to think that it's not that bad. If that makes any sense."

Something very serious came into Jacob's eyes as he looked at her and heard this. Then he said quietly, "Yeah, I think I kind of know how that is."

They looked at each other a long, silent moment, both of their expressions darkening with something sinister they both knew he was thinking of. Something that might even have been hiding behind her last words before without her realizing it. She looked away from his gaze a little anxiously.

"We shouldn't be talking like this," she said.

"Sorry. You're right." He said it quickly and then, trying to forget it, went on to address something else. "So I haven't seen you in a few years. How's your new life working out for you? Besides everything going on right now, I mean."

"Just fine," she said.

As he had asked the question his voice had been so deliberately casual, and he couldn't help but look at her a little doubtfully now.

"Really," she said. "It's been fine. Great. A lot of things were pretty difficult at first, of course. But being a vampire is something you really get used to, after all."

"Yeah, that's kind of what scares me about it."

She gave a sigh that somehow sounded a little sad.

"I'm…kidding," he said awkwardly.

"No, you weren't," she said, though she didn't sound very accusing.

"I'm sorry. No, honestly…it's good to be able to hear that."

She looked at his completely sincere face and said quietly, "Thank you."

He gave a small nod and looked back up at the sky. "Obviously you weren't _completely _out of your mind, then," he said after thinking a while. "And I guess you really do love him more. Or…differently, at least. I don't know if I ever could have actually wished you felt that way about me anyway. It's kind of like Sam with Emily. It's just too much. You've destroyed yourself with that love."

She went silent and he felt a little regretful, almost apologizing for saying that even though he couldn't help but see it that way. But as he looked at her face after she heard it, she did not look hurt or argumentative.

After remaining silent like this a long time, she resolved to say in a careful and delicate tone, "Yes. It's…different. I wouldn't destroy myself or hurt anyone else to be with you….But I would to keep you safe," she added as she slowly realized it.

As he kept watching her he did not look particularly surprised, just thoughtful. "Do you ever think there's at least a part of you that actually loves me more?"

Her eyes narrowed. "Don't you start," she warned. "I've got a considerably better right hook than I used to."

He smiled. "I just mean because I'm only human. You can't have me forever, no matter what you do."

"That's not true," she argued. "I could have done something to change that last night if that was really what I wanted. I didn't have to save you from becoming like me."

"But you would never want that for me. Your love for me is selfless."

She thought of that a moment and then remembered the completely unreasonable, violent sting it made her feel just to imagine any other woman touching him. She sighed and said, "Not completely."

He shrugged. "Well, what kind of love ever is?" he said dismissively. Then he thought of something else and looked at her again. "Do you think Edward still loves _you_ just as much as he did when he had to worry about protecting you from everything?"

She just glared at him with an intensity that was actually a little intimidating with her piercing, jewel-like eyes. The look on her face seemed to make him first realize what exactly he had just asked.

"Okay," he said quickly. "Pretend I didn't say that. Damn, I guess _I'm_ the one misbehaving. I apologize."

She did not look angry anymore, but she kept looking a little uncomfortable as she went on talking. "What about you?" she asked. "How have you been all this time?"

He shrugged. "Oh, you know. Haven't been great. Haven't been miserable. Actually, in a weird way it almost doesn't even seem like any time has passed since you left. Not for me. It feels like all around me everybody else is starting the jobs they want to have their whole lives and getting engaged and married, even having kids…and I guess I'm just the same old me. And there isn't even anything in particular that I want or am waiting for just now." He looked over at her meaningfully. "Now that my…most important conquest has failed, I suppose."

She shook her head, looking very sadly at him. "Oh, Jake, I really hope you don't just feel like everything in your life is going to work out like that did. If you could_ try…_"

"No, it's not like _that_," he said. He added with a small laugh, "Don't worry. If I haven't found the _one_ yet it's not because of anything having to do with you. Although…" He frowned a little and hesitated to admit it. "I know this is wrong, but I guess the more time goes by the more I just look back and can only think that…you were it. That I just missed out on that. As much as I know how stupid it is, I can't seem to give up seeing you that way…"

She sighed. "I think you idealize me."

He smirked as if she had just something very funny. "Are you kidding?"

"You haven't_ seen_ me at all during all these years you've kept thinking that. And did you ever think it's just some guilt thing? If I was just dead now from some accident that had nothing to do with you, maybe it wouldn't be such a big deal."

"But I don't feel guilty about what happened to you. I tried as hard as I could to stop you, didn't I? But I know it was hopeless, almost like...trying to save somebody who's already dead. You had your mind made up. It was like that Greek myth. The guy who went to the underworld to try to bring his lover back from the dead…"

"Orpheus?" she asked with a raised brow.

"…I guess," he said with a shrug. "I think maybe you could have been saved, but not by anybody else. There was no possible way for you to make everybody else happy. You would have needed to just realize why not to do it for yourself...And don't worry. You may feel really bad about it now, but I_ do_ realize that even if you'd chosen to stay human it wouldn't necessarily have meant choosing to give him up."

Her face turned very sad. "Actually, I probably wouldn't have had any other option if I still didn't want anybody to end up dying for me," she said. "I guess it was sort of a double-edged sword. The Volturi wanted me turned or dead. As long as I stayed here or anywhere with Edward, they would have been able to track me down and everybody around me would have been in danger."

"You think I would have cared about that? I would have protected you. I would have run away with you if I had to."

"You would have quit school and left Billy and the pack to just run off with me to God-knows-where? What kind of life together would that be?"

"It would be life," he answered before he could help himself. "It's not like it would have had to be like that forever. Actually sounds kind of fun and exciting."

"It would to you," she sighed.

Jacob sat up and started stretching his arms. "I really need to go back to my friends…"

"Yeah, I have to go soon, too," she said, but then added, "Jacob…"

He looked back down at her. "What?"

"There's something I've been wanting to ask you. But I'm afraid that it's a really ridiculous question and that it should just be obvious…"

His brow narrowed together. "Okay. I'll try not to look at you like you're crazy or anything."

She waited a moment, needing to think of how exactly to ask this. "When I found you here…before. You didn't change back until you saw me…"

The look in his eyes changed to an almost vacant one as he remembered, immediately seeming to know what she was going to ask. She could tell just from how he reacted then that perhaps it wasn't as obvious as it seemed and there really was something more to know…

"I just can't help but wonder why exactly you…Did you actually realize there was a way I just might be able to save you? Or were you really hoping I could…_kill_ you?"

He let out a quick, almost scared-sounding breath after she said that, shaking his head. "Oh, Bella, I really don't know if I could have actually asked you to do that for me. And not when you still needed to help the others…"

"But when you saw me there…" She now was starting to sound strangely frightened.

"It's not what you're thinking. It's not like I ever would have wanted _that_." He shook his head, just looking as bewildered as her. "But I wasn't hoping you could do anything. I wasn't able to hope for _anything_ at that point. I was ready to have to die. My rational mind knew there was nothing to be done. To tell you the truth, I don't really _know_ what made me phase back at just the right moment. I wasn't paying any attention to anything around me and it was like nothing existed anymore but the pain, but then suddenly I knew I wasn't alone, and the first thing I became aware of again was seeing your face when I looked up, and then you were…"

He seemed to come out of some reverie, looking at her and giving a weak laugh. "This answer is a lot weirder than the question, okay?"

She just nodded.

He started remembering again and continued. "When I saw you, suddenly it was like you weren't just with me, but you were…talking to me. Kind of like the way me and the other wolves can talk to each other. It was like you were in my head, but you weren't saying any _words _exactly, just somehow communicating all these clear emotions to me. And when you saw me like that, I could feel how much you…you didn't want me to die. It was like you were begging me not to die, and then I didn't want to just give up anymore. I couldn't not listen when I could feel the kind of desperation you had then. And then already it was like it didn't hurt that much for a moment, and I was able to just naturally calm down with you there and change back, and just put myself in your hands even though I had no idea what was going to happen…It doesn't make any sense now that I try to remember exactly what it was like, but it just seemed like the right thing to do at the time."

Bella started to look a little troubled. "What if I made you do it? Without meaning to?"

He immediately shook his head. "After I realized what you must have done with Jane, that's what I was thinking the whole time after you left. But now that you explained to me how it works, I really don't think that could be it."

"There's no other explanation."

"But I _knew _it was you in my head thinking all that, not me. You said it doesn't work if somebody has the chance to second-guess himself."

She just kept looking doubtful.

"Bella, how the heck is it that nobody else even knows about this talent you have? You haven't actually kept it from the Cullens so you can_ use _it on them?"

"No!" she said. "But I haven't been deliberately using it until now. I didn't really…like the idea of being able to use people that way. I sort of still don't like it but I just know it was necessary."

"Are you sure that's really all there is to it? Just as it is, it doesn't really seem to reflect any important aspect of your personality. Isn't that how it usually is?"

"I'm sure I've been this way for too long not to have seen some sign of everything it involves."

"Hm," he just said.

He stood up, and Bella quickly joined him by gracefully shooting up onto her feet.

"What time are you supposed to see them?" he asked.

"Eight."

He nodded. "Give me a call as soon as you find out what's going on. Remember these numbers."

She only had to passively listen as he told her two phone numbers to immediately know them perfectly. Then he said, "Those are for the Clearwaters' house and the Uleys.' Try those if there's no answer at my place."

"Alright."

She turned and dashed out of sight before he had even begun to leave in the other direction.

* * *

When Bella got home she went right in through the window of her and Edward's room and went into the bathroom to shower before doing anything else. Dried blood ran off of her and swirled red in the water around the drain.

Edward was sitting downstairs just waiting for her when she came down with her hair slick and wet and immediately went to sit on his lap. When she leaned down toward him to kiss him he instantly drew his face back away in an uncontrollable knee-jerk reaction. When she looked at him questioningly, his face was apologetic.

"I'm sorry," he said. "You still smell like a dog all over."

She just looked even more confused.

He didn't seem to want to say it. "I can smell his _blood _in you," he explained, and then looked away from her eyes a little uncomfortably.

As she just stared down at him, she could imagine he was wondering if that lingering stench was ever going to be out of their lives for good.

Finally he looked back up at her with a completely passive look in his eyes and pulled her forward close to him so that she was then holding his head close against her chest. He turned his head in toward her, lifting his face up to kiss her throat, and then as she ran her fingers through his hair he gave her a tight squeeze in his arms.

Then after a long time that they just sat holding each other this way in silence, she was almost about to ask him what he was thinking about when he asked her something in a very careful, quiet voice that answered the unspoken inquiry.

"You still love him a lot, don't you?" he said.

She pulled away from him enough that he could see her face, but she looked down, not meeting his gaze. Her silence seemed to be the only answer he needed.

He was even more reluctant to ask the next thing. "Perhaps…even more than ever before?"

The hurt was unavoidably showing in his face for the split second she did look up at him again. She realized then, with so much shame it made her feel furious at herself, how much of his feelings about this he had just been hiding for so long out of consideration for her.

But as much as she knew he deserved an honest answer, as she tried to decide what was even close to the right way to explain it, she just ended up sighing in moderate frustration. "Differently," she said, failing to sound very sure. "And…also the same way as before. It's just...It's harder. It's harder not to think about it. To just ignore..."

It was the most she could bear to admit to him.

He waited a long time before saying anything, and even when he did he did not raise his eyes to look at her. "Then I suppose I am at least lucky that I cannot hear your thoughts if it is so difficult for you to keep from thinking about him."

She looked away at something far away in the room, not wanting to see his now stony expression any longer.

No, she thought decidedly. Her love for Jacob had not changed. Just as she had always feared it never would, in a way. But maybe her desire for him had.

Though perhaps the same thing could be said about her feelings for Edward now. She could remember it so well, though she would never be able to have it again: the way she used to almost think she could feel a magnetic attraction between them when she was human. There had been no feeling like it, being held by indestructibly strong arms that had pulled her out of the way of death like a knight in a fairy tale. It used to seem like she was never more alive than when her heart was pounding uncontrollably in response to him touching her, even the lightest and briefest kiss. It used to feel like without having that, there was no life. It had been so easy to be sure she loved and needed him more…

Edward groaned a little, looking up at the clock. She followed his gaze to see it was almost a quarter past 7:00.

"I wish Alice was here so I would know the moment she sees anything," he said.

"Where did she go?" Bella asked.

He looked back at her, looking a little bothered. "It was Jasper's idea," he said. "He started wondering if this arrangement might actually be some kind of trick. If we tell the wolves that they are supposed to be meeting us here at a certain time, naturally they will never suspect and be ready for anything in La Push…"

She gasped a little as she realized what he was saying. "He doesn't think they're planning to just ambush them there_ now?_" she said.

Edward shook his head. "_I_ find it quite unlikely. I do not think even catching them that off guard would be worth risking that kind of attack in broad daylight. But just in case, he and Alice are just going to stay right around the boundary line until she sees something that assures her they are really coming here. If it starts to seem suspicious—if she still cannot see a thing they are planning when it is getting very near the time they should have come to a decision—then, well…treaty be damned. They're going to go in there and try to warn them that something seems to be wrong and call us immediately. But as I said…I really don't think we should be worried about it. We're just being very cautious."

"So they've been out there all night?" she asked.

"Yes. Well, Rosalie was there with Alice for a while until Jasper joined her instead."

Bella felt almost overwhelmed with affection for her family then. Helping the wolves did not mean nearly as much to any of them as it did to her, yet they really were willing to do absolutely whatever was necessary and seemed as dedicated to this as if it really were a cause close to their hearts. She wondered how much of it was all because of their loyalty to her.

She looked back at the clock. The time, of course, was hardly any later than the last time she had just looked, but it seemed a lot more important now. "It's getting pretty late," she said.

"Yes," he agreed. "I expect they will be back with something to tell us any minute."

As she kept staring at the clock, he put his hand to her face, smoothing his thumb along her cheek. "Don't worry. Alice will see what is coming. She may already have."

"She should be here." She could not help but feel nervous even though she had a hard time believing that the Volturi would go after the wolves one-by-one at a time like this herself.

"She will be," he assured her.

It was not until 7:35 that Alice and Jasper finally returned to the house. Their arrival alone was such a relief that Bella's primary concern was not even to ask what exactly she knew now. But after hearing them come in, her heart sank when she and Edward came to meet them downstairs and she saw the looks on her and Jasper's faces.

Bella froze where she stood, no longer approaching them, afraid to hear it. But Edward was only impatient to know.

"Let me see, Alice," he said right away.

Alice looked at him with a fearful but controlled expression. Bella got the impression that in her effort to remain calm she could only push what she had seen out of her head, so Edward could not yet read it in her mind.

"Edward," she suddenly said to him in a very level voice, as if she was trying to keep him from getting mad. "I am sorry."

"What do you mean you're sorry?" he demanded. "Why won't you—?"

"You'll hear it from them," she said. "There is nothing you can do. If I let you know what it is, I know you are going to get very…"

She did not finish, seeming to think it was not going to help things to tell him. Everyone had come to meet her, and they all just looked confused and lost. Bella looked at Edward, who was seeming to struggle not to argue and just somehow force it out of her, and could only wonder why in the world Alice was speaking directly to him.

Just as soon as she had thought this, Alice's eyes then went from him to her, turning very sad. She came right forward to Bella, suddenly losing her composure a little as she threw her arms around her neck and hugged her tightly.

"Oh, Bella," she whispered. "I'm so sorry. It's awful. It's _awful_ for you, I wish it were anything but this..."

Bella held her shoulders firmly, not quite hugging her back. "What is it?" she asked, feeling barely able to speak. "What are they going to do?"

"As soon as we would be able to explain it to everyone, they would already be here anyway," she said as she let go of her. "They're early."

"_We?_" she echoed the word in confusion. What did this have to do with her and Alice?

A few of them then tried to get it out of Jasper, who clearly had been told all about it, but of course, Alice was right. More than fifteen minutes before the Volturi were expected, they heard a group approaching and there came a strong knock on the door.

Sighing, Carlisle went to answer it and let them all in. Seven of them in all had come along, and they entered in a group of swishing coal-colored cloaks brushing against the clean white floor, dark shapes that filled their bright home like foreboding shadows: Aro, Marcus, Caius, the brown-haired male who had attacked Alice and then obviously managed to escape from Paul, Demetri, the female with long black hair, and Alec. All of them grouped together in front of the door as Aro came forward in front of them.

It was very different from the time some of them had been here before, a visit that had started out so well-mannered. All of them looked just as unhappy and distressed this time as all of the Cullens did. There was none of Aro's usual friendliness in his voice when he began to speak, sounding fatigued and like he almost could not care about anything he was saying.

"I suppose you already know what I have come to say," he said.

"_I don't understand_," Edward suddenly said in a growl of rage.

Bella looked to the side at him, her eyes widening when she saw the look on his face. He looked both angry and completely daunted, shaking his head like something made no sense to him.

"This is impossible!" he said. "_How_ can you—?"

"Just let them speak, Edward," Alice said sadly.

"Actually, Aro, only a few of us have any idea about what you have decided," Carlisle interjected, sounding almost as troubled as Edward. "You took quite a while to agree, it seems."

"Yes, I'm afraid we did," Aro said. "And not very enthusiastically did we agree, in the end."

"That is surprising." Carlisle could not help but express his alarm; clearly he had not often known the Volturi to quarrel very much over anything.

Aro just nodded seriously, and then sighed. "I will get right on with it, then," he said.

To Bella's complete surprise, he looked right at her before he went on speaking.

"We have an offer to make you," he said directly to her.

"_Dammit!_" Edward shouted miserably, turning away from the both of them with his hands clawed into his hair, but he was only ignored as everyone was captivated looking at Aro and waiting to hear his next words.

"It is not like us to let a concern like this pass," he continued, "but these circumstances have become very exceptional. After quite a lot of discussion, we have resolved to give you the option of making a deal with us. If you are willing to be cooperative in such an exchange, we would be willing to forget this entire matter with the werewolves."

Bella just blinked looking at him and shook her head once, not understanding. "In exchange for what?"

"Your talent, of course," he said. "Your service. We would like you to join our guard."

At first, the whole house was arrested with complete silence. Then, to the surprise of many, some of the Volturi were the first to react with shock, and it became clear that their leaders had not yet shared with them what they were going to do.

"What?" said Felix a little vacantly to himself, just looking over at Aro like he must not have heard him right.

"Aro!" Alec exclaimed, suddenly looking furious.

"You will be silent, Alec," Aro ordered calmly.

Not seeming to hear it, Alec went on with disbelief, "But I had no idea—I thought we were going to _surrender_."

"You assumed."

"How can you want _her?_" he asked, pointing at Bella with a look of disgust. "Do you think I would accept her as one of us? Do you think I would fight beside her? She killed Jane!"

The words seemed to tear out of him like they caused him pain. Bella found herself completely unable to move as all eyes in the whole room burned into her.

"And all in the defense of one of those _foul_ creatures, no less!" Alec added.

"Yes," Aro said quietly, suddenly sounding deeply wounded. It looked like it took him a lot of effort to gather himself together and look back at Bella to keep speaking. "Precisely. She killed our Jane. Not an easy thing to do, especially with _you _right there at her side, Alec—"

Alec just turned away then, letting out a pained groan.

"And not an easy loss to replace," Aro continued somberly. "Jane was beautiful and powerful. It is an invaluable fortune to find anyone with gifts as remarkable as hers."

"This is ludicrous!" Edward cried, obviously unable to cooperate and stay in silence any longer. "I don't understand—Alec was _there?_ She said nothing of—Is this what you want out of some personal grudge because of what she did? How could you possibly be interested in _her?_"

Aro's brow raised in astonishment at the question, and he looked around at all of the Cullens, returning to his usual curious self for a moment. "Ah," he said. "So you were _not _all just lying to me the night when I first asked about her abilities."

"Bella?" Emmett suddenly said.

"What is he talking about?" asked Esme.

Bella finally looked away from Aro to turn her head toward Edward, and found his eyes full of overwhelming shock as he just stayed still, obviously seeing something very intricate and illuminating that Aro was remembering then. Then, very slowly, he turned and met eyes with her, his expression not changing. Bella swallowed deeply as he stared at her that way, as if he was not sure what he was looking at, feeling like there were multiple worlds in between the two of them then.

"Yes," Aro said with a small grin, watching this. "You all should have seen her there as Alec did. It was like watching someone protecting her mate."

Bella suddenly could not look at Edward's face anymore, closing her eyes heavily a moment with a deep, hopeless sigh.

"You mean Bella actually survived facing Alec and Jane at the _same time?_" Carlisle asked. "We didn't know—"

"No, it seems she never told you a lot. I suppose it was quite wise of her, too." Aro suddenly looked directly at Edward, who was still standing still and just seething. "Come now, Edward, it would not be so terrible. I understand how opposed you would be to being separated from her. Of course, if she agrees to do it, you are more than welcome to join us as well."

"_No_," Bella gasped, the words getting the first strong reaction out of her since they had arrived. Edward just hung his head down a little.

"In fact," Aro said with a small smile, "I must admit we are somewhat looking forward to that possibly being an extra part of the deal. But we are simply the most confident about her being willing to do it because…Well, I think you all _know _why."

Everything went silent again. Aro shook his head as he looked at her, as if she was more impossible to comprehend than anything he had ever laid eyes on.

"You are quite an eccentric character, aren't you, Bella?" he said, giving her a strong impression that he was trying to find a harmless way to word it. "I suppose in several ways this is your battle."

What he was hearing in some of the others' heads then seemed to fuel Edward's anger far beyond restraint. He looked right at Marcus and said, "Yes, and what do you think you could really want with a _dog lover_ as part of your guard, then?"

"Edward—" Esme began in a calming voice.

"You are making a terribly foolish mistake," he said, looking back at Aro. "You could not possibly find the trade to be worth it. She would never last for—"

"Edward." This time it was Bella who tried to silence him, and his face jerked toward her with shock when he heard her speak. She just stared at him with a contained, accepting expression, asking him with her eyes to let it go.

Then she looked back at Aro with a look of finality. "Do you mean indefinitely?"

He looked caught off guard by the question. "Well, not necessarily...It is only a few members of my guard who actually mean to stay with us forever. Hm. I suppose it is ridiculous we did not discuss this, but we have never taken anyone on for a set amount of time before..."

Caius muttered something to him that Bella could not hear. Then he nodded and said, "Yes, I think that seems fair." When he looked to Marcus a moment, who also nodded in agreement, he said, "Ten years for every wolf spared."

"...Eighty years," Bella confirmed quietly.

He nodded. "You may have as much time as you think you will need to decide, of course."

Bella's first inclination was to tell him she needed two weeks. But she thought of Emily alone wherever she was, waiting, and said, "Three days."

Edward gave a heavy, despaired sigh next to her.

Aro only nodded and said, "Then we will anticipate a visit from you then. You all should be able to follow our trail quite easily. We are staying about forty miles southeast of here."

He then swiftly turned to leave, followed by the others. Bella stayed still as everyone else was already trying to make sense of this and talking to each other while the Volturi left.

But she was pulled out of her paralyzed state of shock when Edward suddenly turned to Alice and said angrily, "So _this _is what you have been taking so much care to keep from me."

Bella's eyes widened as she turned to them. "Edward, don't be angry with—!"

"Somebody tell me what the _hell _is going on," Emmett demanded.

Bella sighed exasperatedly, and suddenly Emmett turned around with wide eyes as he thought he felt someone hit him hard on the back as if to get his attention, only to find nobody there. "What the…?"

"It's my talent," Bella explained. "I can make people think things or feel things or hear things. I hadn't cared to develop it before, but it turns out it's pretty useful for attacks."

"You knew about this," Edward said to Alice, still sounding accusing.

Alice just crossed her arms defiantly. "It had to be kept from everybody for now."

"But you—you must have had some idea this could happen, and you actually _encouraged _her to develop it?"

"Don't be ridiculous, brother," Rosalie sighed. "She could be dead now if she didn't know how to do it."

"And others, too, I suspect," Alice added.

It seemed to start to calm Edward down a little. He glanced at Bella with a torn expression. "Yes. You're right, of course…but…" He sighed frustratedly, just shaking his head at Alice. "You might have been able to entrust _me_ with this information, if no one else."

"What _for?_" Alice said. "What do you think you would have been able to do to protect her from something like this happening? Try to lock her up somehow? She isn't just a helpless human anymore, Edward. You can't take advantage of that to try to _make_ her stay safe anymore."

He gaped at her like he had been slapped. "If you are actually suggesting I _prefered_ her to be—"

"Stop it, you two!" Esme interrupted.

"And no, don't you start trying to make me calm down!" Edward shot at Jasper, ignoring her.

"Come on, Edward, you know she didn't mean it seriously," Emmett said.

"Alice," Bella suddenly said, something restrained held back in her voice. Everyone turned to look at her as if in all the chaos over her they had forgotten she was standing right there. "What did he mean? How did you know this could happen? Had you seen when they first came here that they would have been willing to…?"

"_No_," Edward said firmly, answering for her. "That was not what I meant. They were extremely interested in you for a long time, and a lot of their hesitation to go through with this attack for so long had to do with how important it was to Aro that things remain as friendly as possible between us. He had such high hopes that he was going to meet you again and find an extraordinarily gifted specimen to add to his collection, so much that it was of much greater interest to him than the wolf pack and was probably the thing that finally motivated them to make the journey here. But I really do not think if you were honest about what you seemed to be capable of at first it would have meant that they would have made this offer to you from the beginning. They never would have imagined that there was any likelihood of you accepting. They first had to be able to tell that you…well, because of Marcus, you see…"

"Right," she said quietly, relieving him from having to finish and unconsciously bringing her hands together to touch her bracelet for a second.

Everyone went momentarily silent once more, and suddenly extremely anxious, Bella could not stand there doing nothing for another second. A lot of them watched her as she walked quickly away from the group to go face the glass wall, taking her phone out of her pocket.

There was no answer at Jacob's, and then she tried the Clearwaters'. The voice that answered was unmistakably his.

"Hello?" He sounded eager and nervous, obviously anticipating it might be her.

"Jacob, it's me."

"What happened?"

Somehow the words so naturally spilled out. "They see that this might take more time and effort than they were expecting, and now they really need to leave to take care of some situation in Texas soon. With us involved they know they can't just spare any men to go take care of it while the rest of them stay here, so everything's up in the air now. But they'll be back eventually and we're not going to find out what will happen until then."

She heard him sigh. "Great."

She swallowed, feeling Edward's eyes on her as he listened to the conversation, feeling horrible about what she was doing, not knowing what else she could do. "We'll just have to be in touch, then," she said, hoping the tone of her voice would not betray her.

"Yeah. Thanks."

"Bye."

When she flipped her phone shut, she found that everyone was watching her, though some more discreetly than others. She met eyes with Edward, the almost calm look on her face visibly affecting him as she was the only one who seemed able to accept this turn of events. He knew that saying any of the things he was thinking might be hopeless, and could only look back at her helplessly.

All seven pairs of eyes followed her as she left them in silence, going up the stairs and into her room.


	11. X: punishment

chapter** X **punishment

* * *

Edward found her standing at the window and staring out of it when he quietly entered the room. He sat down on the couch and then entire minutes ticked by before either of them spoke.

"It seems you can be a decent liar when you really need to be," Edward finally commented.

"I have enough to deal with for now without them knowing," she said.

"But depending on what you decide, you may never want to tell them."

She closed her eyes a second, bowing her head a little.

"Well, that would certainly make it easier for you," he added with a hint of dark color in his tone now. "Isn't it strange? I think this is the first time I might feel some true pity for him."

"You're just disappointed I lied to him because you know he would do everything he can to try to stop me. Just like I know you're going to."

"Of course. But it is also almost sickening to think of him having tried so hard to come to terms with what you have chosen only for it to be for nothing because you have committed yourself to something much worse."

"You're being dramatic. I may not like it, but it wouldn't be impossible to stand."

"I am_ not_ being dramatic," he said, his voice rising a little. "Eighty years. It is a little unusual for anyone to serve in their guard just as a low-ranking member for quite that long. Do you know why?"

"Because they're free to leave whenever they like?"

"No, Bella. People_ die _serving the Volturi. They are a very strong force, as you've seen more than enough to know now, and they certainly live up to their reputation, but things do happen. Just enough that they are used to it. Jane was a shock they were not prepared for because she was so prestigious and talented and was always very well-protected by the others, but…you would be another case." His voice broke a little, not remaining as level and strong as he was disturbed by the thought.

"Do you really think I can be worried about that?" she asked sadly. "And besides…I'm strong. I probably won't even be of low rank for very long."

He leaned his forehead over into his hands. "I cannot believe I am actually talking about this with you," he whispered.

After another long moment of silence between them, without looking back up toward her he asked softly, "And are you lying to us, too? To me?"

She turned her head back to look at him, looking alarmed. "What?"

"Three days. Is that how much time you need to make up your mind, or just how much time you need to get ready and say goodbye?"

Her mouth fell open. She turned all the way to face him as he looked up at her again.

"Please, _please_," he said beggingly, "try to not just think about them. Think all of this through. Think about exactly what you are doing."

"I _am_," she said, looking extremely conflicted. "But—"

"These are the same people who have threatened the ones you love, and you are thinking about becoming one of them. Do you really think this is noble? If you accept, we are letting them get off easy when the wolves could still at least get the chance to fight for themselves and take some of them down with them."

Her breath rushed out in a soft, tight gasp.

"It is_ horrible_, Bella, I know that!" he said sadly. "It's not right! Seeing all of this has almost been enough to make me completely forget about what_ I _usually think of their kind. That one…Paul. He probably saved Alice's life yesterday. And I saw what was happening to him the moment it did and there was nothing I could do, no way anybody could get to him in time. I knew it the moment he was dead because he was still quite close but his thoughts just went silent, and I could hear what the others were thinking as they also felt this. I heard them getting scared and screaming their last words to him in their heads as they saw it happening through his own eyes, knowing they were losing him." He shook his head, looking at her sadly and seeing how much it hurt her just to hear all of this. "There was no way I could not be angry then…It is_ not_ right. You must never think I simply do not care."

"I know that," she sighed.

"But this..._this_ is not right either," he said firmly. "You should not have to—"

"Edward, I know I'm not being noble!" she said. "I _know_ this is just giving up and letting them have what they want more. Either way they are going to win in this, even if it's come at a big cost because of Jane. What else can I do? You don't understand…"

She put her arms around herself, holding herself tightly, looking almost nervous. She started to talk very softly, her eyes full of terror. "Two of them are gone. I already know what it's like to know that some of them are dead and they wouldn't be if it weren't for me…It's already way too much to live with. And I even already know exactly what it feels like to think that I'm going to lose _him_…I nearly had to see him die knowing that it's because of me." She let out a fast breath that sounded strangely like a gasp and laugh at the same time. "It feels kind of like my life has become something that constantly puts him in danger. In the past week it's crazy how many times I have been picturing him dead…a lot of the time directly from my hand. I know I don't have to tell you how terrifying that is. Because you know what I am talking about, don't you?"

His look of discomfort answered her clearly as he remembered.

"I never had to think about anything like that before now. I already know how much I could never stand for it to happen. It doesn't make any difference if _you _don't think I should feel guilty. It would feel exactly the same as if I was the one who attacked him."

He stared at her a long time. She had said "to think I'm going to lose him." So naturally, as if it made perfect sense to describe it that way and she had not even noticed what exactly she said, while the wording had sharply pricked something in him when he heard it. Lose. When she had barely spoken to him in years at the moment she found him dying.

"Is it all about him?" he asked her quietly. As he looked at her then, there was no hiding the hurt anymore.

She looked a little daunted, her brow drawing together sadly, and then she turned away from the nightmare that was his injured-looking face and looked back out the window. The sunlight was as bright as ever, making the grass in their yard a bold emerald from this view for once. It felt like a mockery for it to be such a beautiful day.

"You mean like_ you_ would agree to join them all for me?" she asked.

"What else could you expect me to do?"

She took a while to answer, staring outside with a very hard expression. "Edward…You can't do this just because of me."

"Of course I can. The only thing worse for me than the idea of you going to Volterra is the idea of you going _alone_."

"But you wouldn't have to join them. I'm sure Aro would be very accommodating. There's no reason they shouldn't let you come visit me whenever you want."

"No, I can _not_ visit you!" he said, his voice rising desperately. "I can only _be with you!_"

She turned to the side to meet eyes with him, only able to look at him with painful regret, her posture hopelessly sinking a little.

"You are my wife," he said, his tone pleading. "My lover. My mate. You are my _life. _To be apart from you would be vastly worse than anything service with them could involve. This is nothing I have not told you many times before. Can't you understand why my only possible path in this situation is clear to me?"

"Can't you see how that is a little hypocritical to say?" Bella asked before she could stop herself.

He sighed. "You are the one who has a choice to make. I do not."

"That's ridiculous. People always have choices. Paul and Seth had to die for me to finally figure that out. Don't you realize how much more difficult this makes it for me?"

"Yes," he said simply, raising his brow a little. "I do."

She just looked back at him and sighed heavily. "Of course you do. I...I really can't stand to talk about this anymore right now."

She leaned back against the ledge of the window, looking down at the floor.

With a resigned look, Edward said, "Why don't you tell me about your powers, then?"

She had been nervous about finally addressing that with him after the way he had gotten so angry at Alice downstairs. But he did not sound at all like the subject bothered him very much anymore. As he looked at her, waiting, she managed to give him a weak, relieved smile.

"Yes," she said. "I would like that."

When she went to stand directly beside him, he circled his arm around her and held her close. She only hoped that once this was finally out of the way, she would be able to feel like there was nothing at all between them again.

* * *

Jacob was not having a good day at work.

After dealing with two different customers in the past twenty-five minutes mercilessly complaining to him just for forgetting to bring them something, he let out an exhausted sigh as he stopped by the doors to the kitchen to lean against the wall and tie his shoe.

Scott passed by and stopped when he saw him. Jacob looked up before lowering his foot back down and found him staring down toward his feet.

He pointed at something on him. "What's that?"

Jacob looked down at his jeans where he was staring, seeing nothing until he added, "Right below your knee." Then he stretched his leg out a little and finally noticed the long, smeared reddish-brown stain on his pants.

..._Shit._

"Did you spill something on yourself?" Scott asked, even as he sounded doubtful.

Jacob felt so stupid for a moment he could not even come up with an answer at first. He had been running late to work today and gotten dressed so fast he did not even think about _which _pair of jeans he was putting on…

Finally he resolved to just shrug and say, "I guess I must have. I don't know what that is."

Scott fixed him with a strange look for a brief moment. "Go and try to wash that off as much as you can. It looks a little..."

He did not seem able to think of an appropriate word and just allowed his speech to trail off as he turned away.

Jacob spent more than ten minutes in the bathroom trying to wash the blood off of the bottom of his pants and then getting them to at least look like they were dry. On his way out, he stopped on his way past the mirror, alarmed to see his face. He looked like he had not slept in four days. Maybe it was no wonder everyone he knew here seemed to be talking to him weirdly today. And it probably wasn't helping that he had not even been here for two hours yet and already made a lot of unbelievably careless mistakes.

Scott was near the bathroom doors and came over to talk to him again as soon as he came out. "Look…Is something wrong?" he asked him. "You were half an hour late today."

"Yeah," Jacob sighed. "Sorry. I was just..."

He didn't finish when he was suddenly distracted by hearing the slightly raised voice of someone close by talking with a far from friendly tone. "Just what are you trying to—? Oh no, I _don't _think I want to let you talk to me for a second. Please. Leave me alone."

Lilah.

When Jacob stopped looking away toward where he heard her, he saw Scott seemed to have heard it, too.

"What's wrong with her?" he asked, raising an eyebrow in surprise.

"Oh, _damn_," Jacob muttered angrily as a certain thought came to him. "I really hope it's not…"

He started to go out and see for himself, but stopped when he heard the next thing she said. "Sir…Oh, for crying out loud! We're really busy right now, so if you're finished, please just kindly _get lost_—What?...Oh..."

He and Scott had both started heading out toward the tables to see what was going on when she came walking their way anyway, looking very annoyed.

"Hey, Jake," she said. "There's some asshole at table fourteen asking to see you. He says he knows you."

He was so surprised to hear it he gave a single, deep laugh. "You'll have to be more specific than that," he said. "I know a lot of assholes."

Scott laughed beside them and said, "I thought it would be one of _your _scumbags, Lilah."

"Oh, _ha, ha,_" she said sarcastically. She looked back at Jacob and said, "He said his name's Edward...Cullen? I think that was it."

His small smile vanished like he had been hit in the face. He looked behind her head, unable to see the right table from there, and then walked behind her to quickly glance behind a large pillar that blocked his view.

Edward Cullen looked him right in the face, already staring in his exact direction. He barely started to subtly nod to him before Jacob turned right back around.

"_Shit!_" he said in a loud whisper just out of utter surprise, rushing right back to Lilah. "But why...What the heck did he _do _to you anyway?"

"Well, _apparently_ he's done nothing but stare at me the whole fifteen minutes he's been here," she answered. "I didn't actually notice it myself but Ellie swore to me. All he ordered is a coke and he hasn't even been _drinking _any of it, and before he started trying to keep me at the table long enough to tell me something I saw he left me a twenty dollar tip. Is that totally _creepy _or what?"

Jacob stared at her as she said all this as if something still was not clicking and making sense to him. "But...but wasn't he acting ridiculously charming and...?"

"_Hello_," she said impatiently. "That's what I'm trying to tell you! Yeah, he must think he's_ so _smooth…"

"Wait." Jacob just blinked vaguely for a moment, still seeming confused. "You...told _Edward Cullen _to get lost?"

She nodded slowly. "Right...._What?_" she asked as he continued to stare at her with a dumb-looking expression.

"I think I love you right now."

Lilah rolled her eyes, sighing loudly. Scott laughed as he finally decided everything seemed to be under control and left them.

"_Whoever _he is, will you just go see what he wants so he'll leave?" she said, taking his arm and dragging him into a walk in the right direction.

Edward was stirring the straw around in a drink he obviously still had not touched as he patiently sat alone. Jacob first came and just stood in front of the table, looking down at him questioningly. Deciding it would be too hard to have a discreet conversation that way, he glanced around to see if anyone who would care if he wasn't working was watching before quickly taking the seat in front of him.

"You have very strange ways of coping with tragedy," Edward began just as he was opening his mouth to speak. "Ten minutes before the battle was to begin, all you were thinking about was how you forgot to tell your father where you left his checkbook and what time you were going to have to go to work today."

"…Oh," Jacob said, understanding now how he had found him here so easily.

"But furthermore, I am a little surprised to find you were actually willing to come in_ now_."

"I wouldn't guess that you know much about having to work," Jacob said.

Edward shrugged a little. "True."

Jacob looked down at the twenty dollar bill that was still sitting on the table, not having to voice his thoughts before Edward responded to them.

"I'm afraid I offended your friend a little and did not get the chance to apologize," he said.

"That's a pretty generous tip for a coke," Jacob said.

"I had no smaller bills," Edward explained. "And I am somewhat in a hurry."

He rolled his eyes. "And you were _staring _at her?" he asked with apparent confusion.

Edward looked just a little embarrassed. "More than that, I was listening. It took me a while before I could be sure she is the one who knows you well. I suppose I am...not as composed as usual today, and I was careless about not being too obvious. She is very interesting to listen to, actually. She has quite a..._colorful_ mind."

He smirked a little. "Yeah, I bet."

"Would you be interested to know how she really feels about you?"

Jacob looked annoyed. "Like you can tell me that after hearing her thoughts for fifteen minutes. People lie to themselves."

Edward's face became much more serious. "Yes," he admitted. "They do."

Jacob started to turn to look behind him but Edward said, "He is in the break room. You won't get caught."

"If you have something to tell us then you could have chosen a more convenient place to talk to me," he said.

"That...might have been problematic to arrange," Edward said hesitantly. "She doesn't know I'm here, you see."

Jacob just looked at him a long moment, completely taken aback and not understanding.

"It is very important that I speak to you about something as soon as possible," Edward explained. "About her."

When Jacob headed back to the kitchen not a minute later to make a quick escape through the back door, he passed Lilah and grabbed her shoulder to stop her. "Hey," he said in a low voice. "If anybody asks you, I had a hell of a migraine and had to go. Right?"

She looked at him with widening eyes as he took off his name tag. "You're_ leaving?_"

"_Shhh_," he said, raising a finger over his lips and glancing around them cautiously.

"Aren't you going to tell anybody?"

"Can't wait. Oh—Here."

He took out of his pocket Edward's twenty dollars which he had taken from her table so nobody would steal it. "Go ahead and keep this," he said, handing it to her and winking. "He really didn't mean anything by it."

"But—what the—?"

She couldn't finish before he had gone through the kitchen door and was gone.

* * *

The sun had come out for a second day, but already it was starting to get dimmer. As Bella stood once again staring out the large window in her room, it seemed to her that all the time since yesterday morning had already gone by so fast. It was rare for her to have such a strange perception of time anymore, and it felt surreal for it to already no longer be so bright outside.

Standing here, she kept being reminded of the night just a couple weeks ago she had been in this same place watching the thunderstorm. The time she had realized her bracelet was misplaced. She looked down at her crossed arms now, seeing the bracelet securely fastened around her wrist where it was supposed to be. Just looking at it seemed to make all of her ache sharply all the sudden. It was just like the moment that the bolt of lightning had struck and sounded so loud and close it was like it had cut right through her, splitting her in half, only it was not a harmless and distant awareness this time but a very near, tangible, and agonizing pain.

What was she going to do if she decided to leave? If she went to see Jacob one last time, to tell him some lie for him to believe the rest of his life, could she possibly be strong enough to hold herself together and not let him see that something was wrong? Even if she knew what it would mean for his and everyone else's safety, could she handle that part?

One. Last. Time. The idea had not even completely registered in her mind yet, what it meant. There was enough to think about without acknowledging that yet. It was the least important thing to consider.

Instead she thought of dim memories, the way the cold had had her trembling in the deep underground of Volterra surrounded in the dark by tall, looming hooded figures like angels of death. She looked from the bracelet on her wrist to her arm; she ran her hand over it and felt the several tiny grooves she now had there as well as on her other arm and some parts of her back. Bite marks like the one she once had only on one of her hands. How many more scars might she have in the future? She tried not to think she could be turning into the same thing Jasper used to be.

At least Edward would come with her. At least they would be together. As much as she was doing all she could to make him see he shouldn't feel like he had to join her, she knew in the end it would be cripplingly painful to say goodbye to him and easy to let him come. Her relief, she hoped, would eventually overcome her guilt. His presence would be the only consolation through all of it, the only joy in an otherwise empty and drudging life. She kept thinking this to comfort herself, but it was not doing as much as she would expect to take away the fear and worry. She could hardly bear the thought of them being apart in any circumstances, much less as she had to live a life like this. But at the same time, she could not any more easily bear the thought of him having to be there with her, sharing her cage.

She remembered how only a few years before, in a time when it felt now like she had been so much younger, she thought that having Edward in her life would always be enough to make her happy no matter what, make her life heaven without death. She had been so certain, as if the solid conviction lived in her blood and had always been there, that there was nothing else she could ever possibly care about or need.

It made her feel so ridiculous and ashamed.

* * *

Jacob had driven just a few blocks from the bar and then pulled over somewhere to get out and talk to Edward, who had said he would find him. Edward had instantly followed in his Volvo and they had both been standing and leaning back against Jacob's car as they spoke.

After Edward finished telling him everything, Jacob was just silent a while. Cicadas were screaming around them, and it seemed to fill the momentary silence between them with an appropriately unpeaceful sound that spoke for everything he was not yet saying in response.

"She did not want you to know, of course," Edward said. "But I think you—all of you—need to be aware of what is at stake."

"And you think I might be able to do something," he assumed, not completely buying the more attractive explanation for this conversation. He sounded almost mocking, as if he felt like Edward was coming to him and just asking him to fix all his problems for him.

Edward hesitated. "You may try to hide a lot from others, and I believe sometimes even what I have heard in your head has been a little deceiving. And as I said, you have strange ways of dealing with these things. But…I _know _you still care about her just as much as you ever did. And I know I am not wrong in assuming that if she is thinking about doing something like this, you would rather get the chance to have your say about it."

"Do I_ have_ a say?" Jacob asked with lucid bitterness, and then added as if it was terribly relevant, "I didn't get an invitation to that meeting, did I?"

He sighed. "I think if either of us is able to tell her anything that might sway her, it is you. I am sincerely sorry for the losses our presence here has now caused you, whether you want to believe that or not. But I am not exactly in the position for my feelings about this to matter."

"She's your wife," Jacob argued, though he sounded a little mocking again.

"Yes. And much more than that. These things she feels so guilty about can do nothing to taint my love for her. Unfortunately, I can do nothing to try to instill that kind of forgiveness in her for herself. If…" He stopped, trying to think of how to explain it. "If I love her as unconditionally and changelessly as I do, you see…how can my opinion of her decisions seem to matter? I suppose to her, my approval of certain things can seem as meaningless as that of an innocently devoted child. It is so easy for her to keep my love. At least that is how she might see it. _I _simply see even her weaknesses, what makes her so willing to dispose of herself like this, as part of what makes her special to me and has me so irremovably attached to her."

"Well...you might be wrong in thinking that it's much different with me," Jacob said quietly. "It's hard to say how much you can forgive sometimes. Love can be really messed up and illogical. Only I'd probably never be able to speak with so little shame about it."

"You still can do for her what I cannot. You can try to make her see that there is just as much shame in this as anything else she now has to live with. When it comes to anything I could possibly try to tell her about this, I am too flattering a mirror to be able to make her truly confront herself."

Jacob just shook his head as if this all had him in disbelief, looking like he could almost laugh. "I have to try to convince her to do something that _you_ can't," he said, sounding daunted by the ridiculousness and impossibility of it.

Edward was silent a long moment. When he spoke again it was more delicately, tip-toeing around the thing he did not want to talk about with Jacob any more than was necessary. "You can discuss things with her that she is not comfortable about admitting to me. In fact, if your thoughts in the past ten minutes are any indication, I believe you already have. She is just too afraid of hurting me."

Jacob dug his hands in his pockets, looking uncomfortable. "She doesn't have anything to feel bad about."

"I know. Nonetheless, I can tell she does. Just like when she blamed herself before. And somehow, it feels as if it has closed up everything between us. It is like I can hear these holes in everything she says, where something is missing that she does not want to tell me."

Jacob's face slowly changed as he heard all of these words, starting to look vaguely shocked as he stared off in the distance. It was not much, but it was more than he would have expected to hear. He said "before" almost as if it meant the same thing as "the first time," as if something had actually _happened._ But nothing had happened, even if Bella's perception of everything had been changed by the recent events. Nothing had changed. And at the same time, everything had.

Once Edward was silent, obviously having plenty reflection of his own, Jacob remembered that he knew every thought that occurred to him and felt like all of him had suddenly gone tight, not knowing what to say or do.

"You should trust your ability to understand her more," Edward only said quietly. "For the most part, I am sure you have found she is quite unchanged. You still know her just as well as you used to. But Bella is..." His voice trailed off for a while and he seemed to be struggling very much to voice what he was thinking. When he went on he sounded distant and meditative, almost as if he was starting to just think aloud to himself. "She has always kept many things to herself. She is not very good at expressing exactly what she feels, and she does not always even know what is in her own heart. There are these dark, hidden parts of her I have no understanding of, I think because they are just as strange to her. I did not have any idea what she was capable of until I discovered how she defended you from Jane and Alec. She hid that from me. She makes her decisions on her own now. She hates that I am so willing to go with her to Italy. And I feel...completely helpless. Unable to change her mind or do anything for her now. Like she does not really need me anymore."

"That's retarded," Jacob said before he could help himself.

Edward just gave him a mildly surprised look.

"People in a relationship aren't supposed to need each other for...well, anything other than just _each other_," Jacob said. "What century are you in? She's never needed a bodyguard or a daddy."

He sighed. "I wonder if you would talk about it so crudely if you had been there any of the times I did have to be the former. It was not to _impress _her. I would certainly rather not have been needed in any of those cases."

"If you didn't want to end up having to save her from vampires, why didn't you just stay away from her in the first place?"

"…Oh," he said, seeing that Jacob was only thinking of the scar he had seen on Bella's hand in response to his words. "So she never told you the rest."

"What are you talking about?"

Edward stared forward, his eyes looking far off into the past. "Shortly after Bella moved here I pulled her out of the way of a van that was sliding toward her on some ice. That was how I gave myself away, and it became impossible for me to try to ignore her from then on when she had so much curiosity about what I really was. Of course, I cannot simply give her the blame because of her persistence; I was near her much more than she knew at that point, because I told myself that was harmless. And one weekend I followed her to Port Angeles...and while she was walking alone, these four men..." A shadow of deep anger flashed across his face, but it seemed like it was too tired a memory now to affect him very intensely when he thought of it. "Perhaps it is true that everything would have been different if I never found myself having to protect her like that. You cannot lie to yourself about how you really feel about someone when you see how close they are to that kind of danger. I could see exactly what these men wanted to do to her. That is the first thing I always remember. That and what she said after I had showed up just in time. She said she felt very safe with me. With _me._ And whatever you might think, I was not happy to hear that—that she seemed to have actually come to depend on me in a way just as I did not feel right being away from her. It was the first time I truly felt scared that I did not have control over this. That there might be no going back and I was going to hurt her, in one way or another."

There was a long stretch of silence, and then Edward shook his head, returning to where he was now. "I cannot believe I am telling you all of this," he said, looking to the side at Jacob. "It is very strange, though. I feel as if I have not actually talked about these things in decades."

After another long pause during which Jacob just kept waiting in silence, he finally continued, "But there is nothing I can protect Bella from anymore that she cannot defend herself from. I cannot save her from herself."

"Neither could I," Jacob pointed out, "once before."

"She was not doing it for you before."

Jacob was relieved that he had found out about this rather than staying completely ignorant of it, but he still did not think he quite understood what exactly Edward expected he might be able to do about it. He probably was not even sure himself. But somehow Jacob intuitively knew what truth he had pulled out of those dark places inside her that Edward may not have seen. He said it without being sure why it was even important.

"She's started to see that she could have chosen differently," he said.

Edward kept staring forward a while, and then he slowly nodded. "I have been afraid that that was inevitable."

"It doesn't really mean she regrets it, though," he added.

"How can it not mean that?" Edward said, his voice a little strained with anxiety even as he tried to sound calm.

"I mean she doesn't regret _you_," he said. It seemed to take a lot of effort to say it.

"Quite ironic that_ you _would be trying to assure me of that," Edward said, looking at him with a raised brow.

"I'm only saying that she hasn't said a thing to suggest that. Do you really think that would make me happy? Two people are dead." He had to force the words out with difficulty. "And they shouldn't be. They _shouldn't be_. That's bad enough as it is. All I can hope for is that all of this isn't enough to ruin everything for her."

"Nothing will ever be able to ruin everything between Bella and me."

"Good," Jacob said, sounding a little harsh.

"I have made her happy, Jacob Black," he said back in the same slightly aggressive tone. "As much as it has been in my power to."

"_Good_," he just said again.

"But she could still ruin everything for herself."

Jacob shook his head slowly. "She's not going to be happy to know that you told me this. Will I even be able to get her to talk to me about it?"

"I will make sure she will talk to you," he just said. "And try to make it sound as much as I can like you do not actually have much confidence that you can do anything to influence her choice so that she will not feel like she is going into an extremely pressuring confrontation. Let her be angry with me."

Jacob gave a short, bitter laugh as he got out his car keys and twirled them around his finger. "As if."


	12. XI: the song of orpheus

chapter **XI **the song of orpheus

* * *

Being a vampire meant that compulsively re-organizing things when she wanted to put her mind on something meaningless for the time being did not take Bella very long at all and was not as useful for keeping herself busy as it used to be. She had just finished arranging all of her books she had kept in the office by genre when Rosalie came in to find her. 

When she approached her and she and Bella met eyes, there was a careful silence before Rosalie finally gave her a gentle smile, the kind to stop someone from being scared away that looks very deliberate. "Emmett was sure you'd say no," she started to explain, "and you probably don't really feel like it. But we're going to see a movie and I just thought I'd ask if you feel like getting out of the house to do something for a while."

"Oh." Bella was relieved that she was not here to bring up any of the things she was worrying about enough without others making her talk about it. She did not think about it very long before shaking her head. "Thanks, but I don't think so…Is Edward interested in going at all?"

Rosalie looked mildly surprised by the question. "I didn't ask him. I thought he left with Carlisle."

Bella stared at her, standing still for a moment as she listened closely for all the quiet voices and movement she could hear all over the house. Carlisle had left a while ago because he had some things to pick up at the hospital, but she knew Edward had still been home after he left…

"You mean he's not here?" Bella asked, her voice raising a little.

Rosalie just looked at her, slowly realizing why this disturbed her and starting to look a little shocked and uncomfortable. "Oh, he wouldn't…"

"You know he would," she sighed. "Alice!"

"She and Esme just went hunting," Emmett answered from downstairs.

"Oh,_ that's _convenient!" Bella called bitterly, crossing her arms.

"She feels really awful for allowing it, Bella," she heard Jasper saying. "She's ready for you to want to kill her when she gets back."

"She_ should _be!"

"Bella," Rosalie said in a surprisingly soft tone, looking at her sympathetically, but she did not say what she seemed to want to. Bella could tell how she was struggling to remain somewhat neutral when she could probably understand why Edward would do this and Alice would not want to get involved.

When Edward came back twenty minutes later, he found Bella waiting by the piano, leaning back against it with her arms crossed and looking severely displeased. Not needing to guess why, he just stood facing her in silence while everyone else who was in the room suddenly found excuses to leave so they were soon alone.

Finally she just shook her head. "I can't believe it," she said in more anxious than angry tone, though there was enough anger showing in her face already. "You told him."

"Are you really so surprised?" he asked. "I was quite worried about you suspecting what I was doing soon enough to find and stop me."

"You know me better than that," she replied flatly. "I suppose I'm too trusting to think you would be waiting for the chance to sneak around behind my back."

He just looked at her very guiltily, unable to say anything of any significance in his defense. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't want to do it. Would you be able to just sit around and do nothing in my position?"

She sighed, already knowing she could not quite blame him. "Don't worry. I've forgiven you for playing dirtier than that before."

A shadow of discomfort crossed over his eyes to hear that, as if something about the words deeply disturbed him. Then he said, "He wants to see you."

Her face became hard and anxious again. "Oh, please…I'm not ready to do this right now!"

"That is fine if you don't go right now. He is willing to wait all night if he has to."

She gave an exasperated sigh and started walking past him toward the door. "At his house?" she said, sounding agitated again as she very reluctantly moved.

"No. At the boundary line. Right where we used to meet him when I dropped you off to see him."

"…Oh." Somehow, even though she shouldn't have been surprised, it seemed like it could mean something that he wanted to meet there.

It was just Jacob. She shouldn't have had so much fear creeping into her as she left the house and started to run out into the dim, young night. But somehow she had a terrible feeling about all of this.

* * *

Jacob was sitting inside his car waiting when she got there. She expected him to get out when she came and stood right in front of the boundary line, but he just sat there a long while, not even looking directly at her.

"Are you going to get in?" he finally said quietly, looking up at her through the window.

"You're _asking_ me to cross the line?" she asked in surprise.

"Nothing you haven't gotten away with before."

"Because nobody was supposed to know."

"Well, everybody does now, so what does it matter?" he said, starting to sound a little impatient. "Why, would you rather just stay here?"

He gestured to the surrounding forest. Bella looked around and just said, "I don't mind either way."

He only looked back away from her, waiting silently again.

She sighed and went forward to his car, getting into the passenger seat. As he started driving away, she asked, "Why did you even want to meet here, then?"

He kept looking right ahead, almost as if he hadn't paid attention to the question, and hesitated to answer. "I thought it might not be safe unless you're with me."

"Safe?" she echoed, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah. If any of the others smelled you running around here and found you…it just might be bad. Since they know now what you told me…"

"Oh," she said, now sounding a little vacant, as she understood.

"I don't mean to make it sound like…They're just really messed up over this, some of them. Especially…"

"Leah," Bella said quietly, easily able to guess who he was thinking of. In fact, she was pretty sure she was the only one hurting so much that he could really be worried would cause Bella any harm even knowing that it would hurt him.

Jacob glanced over at her for the first time since she had gotten in the car, looking right down at her lap after noticing her fidgeting a little in her seat. Her hands were agitatedly grabbing small handfuls of her dress where they rested on her legs.

He laughed in a way that sounded almost mean. "_Now_ it bothers you to be around me," he observed.

She did not look at him, staring forward through the window with a hard expression. "It's been almost two whole days since I've seen you," she pointed out.

He did not say anything more about that, just watching the road with piercing, locked eyes that seemed to so deliberately avoid her. He started drumming his fingers on the steering wheel with forcibly contained distress. Somehow neither of them could say what was really on their minds yet, but the boiling silence between them then was anything but comfortable as they both already knew exactly what was going to be said. They just weren't ready to pull the pin out of the grenade yet.

When Jacob eventually pulled the car over to the side of the road and stopped, it seemed a little spontaneous and his mannerisms suggested that he was just tired of driving in silence and had no idea where they should really go. Bella was a little surprised when she saw exactly where they were. Right outside her window she could see the cliff above the ocean that a lot of the reservation kids liked to dive from. The exact place she had dived from once.

"Why did you stop here?" she asked a little uncomfortably.

He shrugged. He still would barely look at her as he spoke. "It's as good a place as any."

They just sat there for the time being, neither of them moving, as if they may not even get out and just talk sitting here in the car. He glanced at her long enough to see the look on her face as she peered out at the ocean. "What's wrong with it?" he asked. "You afraid you'll be tempted to jump again?"

She crossed her arms over her chest, looking right away from the familiar view.

"Wasn't there some philosopher who said when somebody has a fear of heights they're not actually afraid of the possibility of falling, but afraid that they could jump?"

"I don't know," she said quickly, almost snapping at him. She didn't know why it kept feeling like they were arguing whenever they said anything.

"There was," he went on surely. "I think one of my teachers said something about it once. It was part of this whole weird idea he had that absolutely everybody is always at fault for their suffering, no matter what. 'Cause I guess for one thing, you're always free to quit complaining and end it all by just jumping off a building or something." He raised his brow then, looking to the side at her. "I guess you're an exception to that when you can't die. Without some help, at least."

"I can still take some responsibility for my life," she said a little severely, as if she felt offended. "If I_ chose_ to become immortal that means I'm still at fault for everything that happens to me and everything I do, doesn't it?"

"_Touché_," he said. "You sure you haven't heard of the guy?"

She very abruptly turned and opened the car door, suddenly stepping out and slamming the door behind her with obvious frustration. He also got out and followed her as she walked out near the cliff.

"What the hell are you doing, Bella?" he demanded, his own anger finally completely showing in his voice.

"I'm not doing anything _yet_," she said, sounding deceptively calm as she stood facing the vast horizon of dark waves with her back to him.

"How can you even be _considering _it?" he said as he went to stand right next to her.

She turned her head to look at his face, just looking sadly at him, her brow creasing with anxiety. "How can I not?" she said softly.

Something seemed to make his breath catch, but his own face did not soften. "Are you even thinking about what this is going to mean for you?"

"Of course I am. And of course I've already been asked that question ten times in the past two days."

"That's crap," he said. "You can't be thinking about it or else you'd realize you're being crazy."

"Don't think nobody's said some variation of that to me already, too."

"For Christ sake, Bella!" he yelled. "When are you going to stop doing this?"

"Doing what?" she asked, shaking her head in confusion.

"You already gave up everything else for him!" he said, some buried emotions starting to wrench themselves out in his voice. "You have barely anything left to lose! If you throw yourself away all over again like this, there's going to be _nothing _left of the person you were before."

"What does it matter? I can never have that person back…_You_ can never have that person back," she added in a somewhat restrained tone. "And it was hardly much to lose for me, anyway. I _hated_ that person."

"And you hate the person you are now, too," he said. "Maybe even more. That's obvious. Only somebody who actually believes they deserve to suffer would think seriously about doing this."

"And maybe I do. Maybe it's dignified if I can accept responsibility for everything I've caused and pay for it. It certainly can't be any worse than having to live with all those regrets without ever being able to do anything about it."

"That's just easy to say right now because you're already dealing with the regret. You could come to find it's not worth it at all."

"It's only for eighty years."

"_Only? _That's the rest of my life!" he shouted, his voice tearing with an uncontrollable hint of inner torment.

The words caught her off guard; she tore her gaze away from him, looking down at the ground as a strange pain she wasn't prepared for seized her. It was something she had barely been able to think about, but she had definitely realized it.

"…I know that," she said quietly. "Don't you realize the only thing that will make it bearable is knowing that at least you get to live all of it?"

He nodded slowly as she looked back up at him. "Uh-huh," he said in an ironic, dark tone. "I know. You'll think of me whenever things get really horrible."

She looked back at him with some confusion, not knowing quite how to interpret his reaction. "Yes," she admitted. "I probably will."

"And will you think of me the next time they find a pack of werewolves they feel like killing?"

She looked at him with widened eyes, not prepared for that.

"Will you still think of me when you have to kill one, maybe fifty years from now, maybe a lot later after I'm dead?" he pressed on. "Or will you just have forgotten why exactly you came after a while?"

"They wouldn't make me do that," she said quickly, shaking her head.

"How do you know? The moment that you're ordered to, is it going to be much of an excuse that you never knew it would happen? And never mind the kind of stuff they do every day. Would you really be able to murder some completely clueless newborn who had no choice about being turned and was just abandoned by whoever created them?"

"Nothing that I would do as part of their guard is anything that can be stopped anyway!" she said. "The Volturi rule this world we know. They have for centuries without anyone stopping them. We can't beat them in this fight, and nobody can beat them. Everything I would have to do is just something somebody else will do in my place if I don't."

"It doesn't matter!" he said. "You are never going to be the same after you've done those things. That'll be no kind of life for _you_, no matter what your reasons. Can't you see that?"

Her eyes started to look a little dead, numbly processing something. "But it _is _the kind of life for me, whether I like it or not. This is what I've become. The Volturi are the essence of my kind, remember? I knew that. I knew what I was getting myself into. Now I might as well just accept it. It's an easy solution, Jacob. No more lives will have to be lost this way."

"If my other option is to live knowing your life has become about efficient slaughter and servitude to a bunch of murderous leeches like them, I think I would rather die," he said angrily.

She sighed. "Have we come back to that again? Me trying to stop you from so willingly going to die in battle?"

He looked a little stung to be reminded of that time. "But I was only bluffing then," he said. "Just like you had to. I'm completely serious now, Bella."

"It's not even fair for you to expect the rest of the pack to still have to fight them," she said.

He looked clearly troubled to have this pointed out to him, but after a moment he just said, "Believe it or not, some of them would rather still fight than just be saved by a vampire. They've gotten a little eager and bloodthirsty now. If Leah can't just kill you then she wants to take down _somebody_ for her brother. And you might have noticed we wolves can be a little bit cocky about our ability to win a fight."

"Dangerously so. I haven't forgotten how lucky I was not to lose you that first time."

When he heard this, something made him go silent, looking at her like he was seeing something he hadn't yet realized.

"Is that nearly all this is about?" he asked quietly.

She kept looking back at him in silence for a couple seconds before just staring forward again, crossing her arms in a somewhat defensive-looking position.

Jacob sighed heavily. "_Look_, Bella," he started in a harsh tone. "This is ridiculous. You know it is. You've got to let me take care of myself. All of us. You know, some of the others don't even think they want your help anymore. They're getting tired of their fates being planned between you and the Volturi behind our backs like this."

"Are they crazy?" she asked with shock.

"Well, whether you like it or not there's going to be a little more tension between us and your family now. And this little truce we've called has been nice while it's lasted. But the treaty is still between _enemies. _We may be fighting next to each other, but we're not supposed to care what happens to each other. We're not supposed to suffer for each other. Just worry about yourself and your own and stop trying to protect a bunch of dogs."

She started to look deeply saddened as she realized what he was trying to say. "We're not enemies, Jacob," she said quietly.

"_Yes, we are!_" he said loudly, trying to pound in something he knew was probably impossible to make her see; he stepped closer to her so he was almost yelling in her face. "Maybe we can get along peacefully, but whether you like it or not, we are! You made a choice! You chose to become this!" As if to demonstrate what he meant he took her face and held it firmly, feeling the chill of her skin on his palms, and he looked like this disturbed him more than he had ever let it show that it did before as he stared right into her topaz eyes. "You can't change your mind and have it both ways, Bella! So quit trying."

As he let go of her, she shook her head denyingly. "But I can't just let go of who I was before. How can I just stop caring? How could I stand it if you died because of all this when I could have stopped it?"

"I don't know," he said bitterly. "I suppose the same way you plan on dealing with it at whatever time I happen to die, since I'm obviously going to be doing it while you're still around."

"But it's not supposed to be now!"

"Bella, you can't have me!" he said firmly, leaning in to peer close at her again. Instead of still angry, he sounded pained and regretful now, hating to have to say it. "Not as your friend, not in any way anymore! You have to let me go, even if it means accepting that I'll have to die!"

"No," she said unwillingly in a soft gasp.

"You've got a whole family who don't want to lose you and a husband who you're going to drag along with you into whatever fate you choose. You gave up so much and hurt so many people to have this life, so just _live _and be happy with him and forget about me."

"Oh,_ fine_," she said with sudden anger, sounding terribly stung even as she shouted it. She reached for the bracelet on her wrist as if she was ready to tear it off. This seemed to momentarily throw off his guard and she could not miss the change in his eyes as she reached for it, looking so hurt for a second as if she had just touched a wounded, sensitive part of him even as they were standing feet apart from each other. But his face went right back to looking more invulnerable and he did not say anything as she took it off.

"I suppose all your promises are worth nothing," she said angrily, holding it out to him like it was something contemptible he was responsible for. "Take this back if you can't be my friend anymore. If you really mean everything you just said."

He just looked at it with a slightly shocked expression, not moving. "I don't want it," he said quietly, looking a little like he was scared to go near it.

Looking almost furious because of how she suddenly moved so fast, she turned around like someone would move to face somebody they were about to shout at or slap, walking out to the edge of the cliff. Then she quickly flung the bracelet over it, where it was visible to him shining in the moonlight in midair for just a split second before it disappeared in the dark, falling into the black sea below.

They both watched it and then stared down in the direction it had fallen for what felt like a very long time, seeming to slowly calm down and realize what exactly had just happened, register what it meant. When she finally looked away first, facing him again, he met eyes with her and appeared to be filled with a sudden unbearable sadness.

"That's not going to make any difference, is it?" he asked quietly.

She looked back at him with the same sadness, not having to answer. He could see that nothing was bending her. He did not know what to do anymore.

They stared at each other for a long time with no sound around them but the waves crashing up strongly against the rock. It felt like something was being emptied out of them in this moment, as much as it could be. They both realized that this could be it. If she decided to go, this could be the last they ever saw of each other. Bella's hands at her sides took hold of the fabric of her dress where the wind was softly blowing it against her legs, as she had in the car, but not for the same reason. Her posture became a little rigid, like it was taking so much effort to stay standing.

"Goodbye, Jacob," she said weakly, the words coming out with so much reluctance that it was only said in a very soft breath.

At first he could not move or say anything. She stayed standing there for a long moment still looking straight at his face, waiting for him to say anything he might say. Then she started walking, looking like she might not even start running for a while, weakened so deep in her soul she just could not focus on anything but drifting off away from him slowly. But when she was barely passing him he finally sprung into movement, stopping her from getting past him by wrapping his arm around her.

"Wait, Bella," he said desperately, holding onto her tightly to keep her from leaving. "Please—"

"_Don't_," she said, stepping back away from him quickly like she couldn't bear to have him touch her. He looked down at her and seemed to take careful note of this reaction, the way she drew her arms in and wrapped them around herself a little as if to forcefully hold them in place away from him.

And then his face started to change, almost imperceptibly, as something gradually started to come to him. His words came out sounding unsure, like he was discovering them as he said them, listening to himself to see if he could really believe them.

"I don't think you're really even capable of doing what you're thinking about doing," he said.

"Why?" she asked.

"Because...you were right. When it comes to how you feel about me you're not completely selfless. It's not just because you think this is your fault that you're so willing to do this. That's just the only reason you can admit to so easily. But at some point you'll have to see that, and I think maybe you'll realize you can't do it."

She shook her head in bewilderment as she heard this. "What are you talking about?"

"I don't think you'll be able to go to Italy because it will mean you can never see my face again."

It knocked her silent at first. But she did not sound quite certain when she replied, unable to look right at his eyes as she said it, "No matter what happens I should probably never see you again…"

"Yes, but I don't think that plan is going to work anymore. Things are different now and you know it. It used to be so obvious to you that it would be a lot more difficult for you to be without Edward than to be without me. Even I believed that meant you really did love him _more_, but who knows? Maybe these things just don't always have to be so obvious. Maybe the way you felt about me was just different. And now everything's a little switched around, isn't it? The competition has leveled out quite a lot."

"There is no competition!" she said, looking in disbelief of what he was saying. "There is nothing to be sure about! It's _over_."

"But it's not over. It's never going to be over, even if you want it to be. It doesn't matter if you stop wearing something I gave you or never hear from me anymore. You really can't let go of the person you used to be, and I think that's a part of why you've become so unhappy. Maybe the only reason it's so easy for you to think about joining them is because it's hard for you to imagine your life going back to being all okay again anyway. I can see you _can't _just forget about me. It's killing you right now just for you to try to walk away from me."

"_Watch me_," she said challengingly, moving again, but he came closer and grabbed her arm to hold her there.

"Please. Listen…" There was something very strange and unlike him in his voice now, unsure and almost scared. "I didn't mean all that about how we can't be...You know I didn't mean that. I see now. I see now that...there's no way we're ever going to be completely separated from each other. Even this couldn't do it. I mean, I guess in a way you being changed has actually just made it worse..."

She stared at his face in silence, just looking full of despair as all his words rang so true. What could he mean to accomplish by saying it all out loud like this? How did he think this could do any good?

"Look…it shouldn't have to be like this," he went on, not sounding quite like he could believe his own words but was just grabbing whatever he could right out of the air. "I...There can always be a compromise. It could be okay..."

"What are you saying?" she asked, starting to sound a little guarded and wary.

He swallowed, and she could hear his heart starting to pound a little erratically, like someone being chased. "Think about it, Bella," he said quietly. "Look into yourself. Think about why you really feel like this is the only thing you can do. Think about what it is you really want. You know in your heart that things have changed. _You _have changed. But you can be such a stranger to yourself. Hell, there's more of the real you in me than there is in _you. _But if you don't realize what I'm talking about before you decide to go away, you could have some terrible regrets."

"You are not making any sense to me," she said in a low voice, and it sounded like a warning.

"I could still survive this," he continued. "None of us are just completely giving up hope yet. And if we both came out of this, things wouldn't have to be so bad. Just stay, Bella. Stay…with me."

Her eyes started to go wide; she stepped back away from him just a little. Then she shook her head quickly, as if denying something to herself, and appeared to become forcefully composed again before she let out a dark, bitter laugh. "Oh yes, that's very funny," she said with a fake smile, an edge of near-hysteria vibrating in her voice. "You're the one bluffing this time. I guess you think this is a good way to get back at me for before…"

"I'm serious," he said.

"You_ can't _be serious!" she said. "I know you can't. You know that's impossible."

"Nothing's _impossible._ It's not like I'm asking you to leave him."

"Well, that just makes it _more _impossible, doesn't it?" She turned away from him, raising a hand over her mouth for an instant like someone who had just seen something revolting. Then she turned back and said in a smaller, scared voice, "Look, I don't know what you think you're doing but _please_ stop it—"

"I know you don't want to hurt him," Jacob said, and something still seemed so wrong; his voice was still very feeble and unconfident, almost unrecognizable as his because of how it sounded now. "But you're already hurting yourself possibly a lot more. He's desperate to stop you from going. And he would forgive you anything, wouldn't he?"

Her eyes widened larger than ever, starting to look furious. "There is also self-forgiveness," she said tightly.

"As if you can so easily live with yourself as it is. Look at everything you've done and caused. You let all that happen without thinking about whether you were being right or wrong so you could be with him. Can't you see how it couldn't be that much worse to compromise yourself as much as you'd have to to be able to be with me?"

"Oh, is _that _the way I should see it?" she said angrily, looking almost hurt. "I might as well do whatever I want because I can't be any worse for it anymore?"

"I'm just asking you to go easy on yourself for once. You've got to stop cutting yourself in half and just accepting the pain you have to live with because you think it's what you deserve for getting the three of us all into this mess when none of it was even your fault. It's not like being a martyr is going to make anything any better. Maybe it doesn't have to be such a mess that you want both of us in your life. Maybe it just…_is_."

Her eyes had now filled with a firm anger that wouldn't budge, and she started shaking her head. "You can't mean this," she just said quietly, almost just whispering to herself. "I know you don't...want me now."

"I didn't mean what I said," he went on, words frantically spilling out of him and sounding almost unconscious. "I don't care that we're supposed to be enemies. I don't care that you're like this now. It doesn't change anything. You know it doesn't."

"_Shut up, Jacob,_" she said in a low, threatening voice like a growl. But through it all there was something devastated in her eyes as she shook a little with her hands in fists, wanting so badly not to have to be so angry with him — not _now_. "Or I will leave now and not even—"

"I mean it. I love you, Bella."

By now he was speaking in a much softer voice than before, but she sounded hard and murderous. "I swear to God, Jacob Black," she said dangerously, her very level tone showing how serious she was even as it clearly killed her to have to say it. "No matter what happens after tonight…you say one more word and I _swear_ I will never speak to you again."

He just stared at her a few seconds, and then he took a couple patient steps closer to her. He said with his voice softer than ever and with the smallest, almost undetectable tremor in it, "Let me kiss you."

As she glared at him then she looked almost like she could kill him, standing frighteningly still. But as she had promised, she said nothing to him. As he slowly stepped closer, she jerked back a little as if to keep the same distance between them, but then froze still as if she was too angry to move or think about what to do.

"Just now," he said. "Just once. So you can see if you really think you can leave…Then I will stop trying to convince you not to go and leave you alone. I promise."

His voice, so soft and passive in comparison to how hers had sounded a moment before, was almost like a coaxing song to calm something dangerous as he slowly approached her. It was somehow hypnotic right now, making it all feel harmless, and it kept her standing in place and made her hands relax out of their fists.

But she stayed rigid when he brought a slightly trembling hand to her face. He stared down at her with heartbreakingly empty eyes, looking like he was willing himself not to feel and just slide through this without letting it quite touch him inside.

He wouldn't. This was what she kept telling herself, the insisting thought that kept her from moving and immediately recoiling away from him as he kept getting closer. She did not want to have to just turn and leave him. And what was so cruel was that he couldn't mean it. She still knew there way no way, and she didn't know what was happening. He would stop and finally show himself, reveal his real intention, so she would not have to just leave like this or else hate herself more than ever…

And after he brought his face down, his anxious breaths warm touching her skin, he didn't do it. Yet. He looked right into her eyes like he was waiting to see something change in them first.

All at once becoming aware of herself again, she snapped her head to the side, looking right away from him with a soft, quick breath like a gasp. As if resigned for a moment, he slowly lowered his face to her neck instead. It was all too much like that last time, him trying to warm and loosen her, let her relax into her real self. But it was different because he _was _hesitant, only planting the softest, tiniest kisses on her cold skin that might feel only like the breeze brushing away a strand of her hair with a human's senses. He was terrified. She could see it. He was sticking his hand right into the broken pieces of glass, sharp shining edges, all that remained of what she once was that could only hurt him, nothing but deadly beauty and blood and pain. He wanted to save her this much. Her cool and sour-sweet scent, so unbearably close, was stinging icily in his nose like mint that is much too strong, a natural warning, and he didn't care, he didn't care.

Without her letting them, her hands raised to his hair and held onto him firmly, because she told herself she was only going to touch him to — only enough to — _something _— she didn't know. And without realizing it she pulled him a little closer.

It was that day again and all of his pain was all of hers again, and she couldn't not do something when she could suddenly feel how much he was hurting. It was impossible not to. Touching him then was as natural and impulsive as it is for someone to keep their hand held over their own stinging, bleeding wound, and to not do it would have been as hard as cutting one's own hand off, like mutilating herself. And yet a buried, faint little voice in her head she didn't quite hear through the drone whiteness knew it was not enough. It would never be enough to make it okay. Not anymore. He weakly, unsurely pulled her close against him so that the heat of his body suddenly seemed to be enveloping her all around like a womb. His hot breath on her skin and the warmth of his hands burning right through the thin cotton of her dress made her feel like she was on fire, stimulating parts of her she had become numb to so that she felt the pain more tangibly than she had in years.

But she let herself sink almost completely into it and down in the dark, reaching down to grip onto his back desperately, and it felt like burning in flames of hell touching him but she did not know if she would ever be able to let go now that she was this close. She knew. She was not selfless at all. She wanted this and she could not and he could not really, but something inside her hoped that everywhere her hands touched him she would brand him with ice, marking and claiming him as hers.

But he still did not kiss her mouth. He would not do it until_ she_ would do it…

Bella had never been very good at expressing exactly what she felt. Things she would never have the lack of reservations to say consciously always used to fight their way out of her mouth in her sleep in nonsense streams of words that could be almost impossible to understand, escaping all run together like a crowd of people bumping into each other as they run for the only exit out of a building that's on fire. But of course, she could not talk in her sleep anymore.

Right then it was as if all of these things she had never been able to get out by saying in her sleep recently were now trying to push their way out of the bars as wordless, helpless sounds that escaped out of her and sounded like the senseless language of a complete stranger, someone outside of herself. Breathed right into his ear, they were barely audible gasps that seemed to almost come out as words, trying to find the shapes of truth but just sounding lost. It was so much like she was trying to whisper something at one point, as Jacob was kissing her right under her jaw, that he brought his lips right by her ear and said in a soft, sad-sounding mutter, "What?"

And this was what woke her up — his voice. What. No. Stop.

_Stop!_

His gruff, shocked groan of pain was not nearly as loud as the gasp of horror she let out as he was sent straight to the ground, automatically reaching up to touch his cheekbone where his face had started throbbing.

As she completely came back to the moment, feeling the cool sea breeze on her skin again instead of the burning fire, she didn't know just what had happened. She had not meant to hurt him. Maybe she had wanted to. But when she had quickly reached for his head to force him away, she had forgotten for a moment that she had to be careful with him, that she _could _hurt him, and the heel of her hand had collided with him like a swung metal baseball bat. Maybe as she was so caught up in the reminders of that day years ago, she had forgotten what she was now...

He stared up at her from the ground as he kept holding his face, which would surely just be crushed from the impact of her hitting him if his body was no stronger than a normal human's, looking not at all angry but just more hopeless than she should ever have to remember someone like Jacob Black looking. They just held each other's gazes, frozen as the shock of everything that had just happened in so short a time settled in and crystallized to hard ice.

Then as her face slowly changed to hold a much more fully realized sadness, she stopped looking right at him as if she was suddenly thinking of something else. Following the thought, she turned her head toward the cliff, looking out at the ocean with a deeply pained look just like what had briefly shown in his eyes when he saw her start to take off the bracelet. She turned and walked toward the edge of the cliff, with a very sudden sense of urgency as if she did not have eternity to find it again. And in one swift, quick movement she dashed right to the edge and jumped. He ran after her to stop and watch just as her pale form, gracefully pointed for the dive with her arms stretched down, went into the water.

She had closed her eyes as she fell, feeling the wind so fast on her face as the night around her suddenly seemed so beautifully calm. It felt like it was the first time she had truly breathed since she had been changed and no longer needed to breathe. She even took a deep breath before she held it, just as a remnant of old habit. She made only a small splash, her body slicing right through the surface in a direct trail of exploding bubbles and cutting far down into the dark depths right away, everything still blue for only a split second before the water around her turned black. As she swam deeper and deeper, searching with so much desperation it was like everything precious to her depended on finding it, she remembered. She wondered what it would have been like to really drown here if Jacob had not come in after her and saved her soon enough. This was where everything had changed. It was so silent under the water, so dark, that it felt almost like really being dead. And it was very peaceful.

Out in the open night air, a different world, Jacob stared down at the waves loudly crashing against the side of the cliff. His heart was pounding in his ears, seeming to be counting every second she was gone. He did not know why he felt scared for her after two minutes went by since she had disappeared under the surface. And then more time dragged on. He thought she was never going to come up. Everything had turned into back then instead of now, and somehow he felt like she was waiting for him to follow, just like he had had to the first time she jumped.

He turned away from the edge, still hearing the waves louder than they had ever sounded to him before from up here, and began to step forward as if he was just testing himself, seeing if it seemed like he should walk away. But it was like something held him to her where she was still down there in the past, and he couldn't step any further. She might not come back up, after all. Maybe she was just going to swim off without seeing him again.

He turned and looked down at the intimidating vast ocean below again, feeling completely torn apart. He understood in this moment how it was going to be. He knew that he had failed. Again. She was already gone and there was no point in going in there after her. He was never going to change her mind. He realized then that maybe he had just been trying to make her hate him, if not realize she loved him far too much, enough to do almost anything, enough to almost give in, and _that _was why…

But nothing had worked and he was losing her again and the last things he needed to tell her were screaming in his head._ I'm sorry, I just had to see. I didn't want to hurt you anymore. Forgive me. _

_Goodbye..._

When he jumped, it was so spontaneous and with so little thought that it was more like he found himself falling. When he went in, at first all he saw of her was a glint of silver in the depths where some moonlight still touched the water. As he followed it all of her appeared, facing away from him and just passively floating there with her hair in a dark cloud around her like an explosion of ink. She might have just found the bracelet and seemed to just be thinking about what she was going to do now.

He took her wrist where the bracelet had been replaced and pulled her around to face him. And the words screaming in his head were gone now in the silence of the deep water, not needed. Her hands were as cold as metal laid on each side of his neck and her lips just as icy as she pulled herself closer and kissed him, closing her eyes. With her breath stopped and her eyes closed as if she could be dreaming of seeing something different around them, she did not see him and she did not smell him. Down here they could be young or old, vampires or werewolves or just humans again, dead or alive. It was the only place where it felt like their love could live, here at its grave where any kind of life they might have had together had ended. He may have been able to save her from drowning, but Bella had still died that day. That day was what had brought Edward back to her and changed everything.

With his own eyes also closed, Jacob did not realize she had started swimming up and pulling them both to the surface until he felt his head hit the air. Once he was taking in deep breaths and opened his eyes to look around, it was just barely soon enough to see her dark head disappear under the water again, already several feet away from him. He knew very soon she would be too far away for him to have any hope of catching up. She was gone.

Without another word.

* * *

When Bella drifted vacantly back into the house she left the front door standing open behind her. Only Esme was downstairs and saw her come in, and as she watched her walk in with her face frozen in a blank expression like a ghost, Bella did not seem aware of anyone's eyes on her. She made it only six steps inside before she sank to her knees on the floor, momentarily not caring enough to even keep moving.

Before she knew it Esme was on the floor as well and holding her, gently saying her name. Bella closed her eyes tight, falling completely against her as she soothingly touchedher hair.

"Oh, Bella. Sweetheart…Edward!"

He was already coming swiftly down the stairs. But Bella knew it would be no comfort to see his face now. It could only make her ache with guilt.

Perhaps he somehow perceived some of her reluctance to talk to him when they met eyes, for he stopped and stood in front of her and Esme instead of coming right to her side. Esme stood up, gently pulling Bella up onto her feet with her, and softly kissed her head before going up the stairs and leaving them alone.

She and Edward only regarded each other in silence at first. She made herself look straight at his face even though she felt too shameful to. He seemed to see something in her face that frightened him a little; he looked down at the floor, away from her eyes, as he was finally the first to speak.

"It's alright," he said quietly. "You don't have to tell me what happened."

"Yes, I do," she whispered.

He just shook his head, looking back up at her sadly.

Then she looked down at the floor, shoulders sinking acceptingly, and then she knew what was to be done. She could have come forward then and embraced or kissed Edward, accepted his comfort, but she didn't. She needed to be hard as steel, not budging. She walked right past him to go up the stairs and he followed her into their room, watching with a look of slight horror as she went to the dresser and started taking out the few items of clothes she might need.

"I know what I'm going to tell the Volturi on Wednesday morning," she said. "There is nothing you can do to change my mind now. And…you will not come with me."

"What are you talking about?"

"This is bad enough for me without you involved," she said, turning to face him after she set down a pair of pants. "I've decided. I can't possibly make this choice if you are part of it. Not if I have to choose between you and him again. I just can't do that."

It was easy to see how deeply it hurt him to hear that. She could barely stand to keep looking in his eyes.

"I would hope that your choice would still be the same," he said very quietly.

"You know what I meant," she sighed. "This is different. It's _worse._ This is so much bigger and more complicated than just what you and I want. I suppose it never _was _that simple to start with but we just couldn't see it at the time. The world does not change for love like ours, no matter how much we might fight and kick and scream and rebel against our families and friends or nature or God. Just because it feels like we're destined to have each other doesn't mean destiny is on our side or we have any right messing with it. Doing it for you doesn't make anything I've done okay. If you love me, you have to let me do the only thing I can do in order to live with myself anyway. If I choose one of you it can only be for a disgusting and despicable reason. I can only save both of you."

"How can keeping me from being with you be your idea of saving me?" he asked.

"How can the kind of lives we'll be living in Italy be your idea of being together? Can you even imagine it? You will never believe that it's worth it. I would just be dragging you down like a weight chained to you."

"Perhaps that is what you are, even if I would never see you as such a burden."

"Then I'm cutting you off!" she said with a sudden heat that she surprised herself with. "This is not for you! I don't want you to practically sell your soul me!"

"Isn't that what you did for me?" he said back in an equally elevated voice. "Isn't that what you're doing for him?"

"At least I'm not doing it for a selfish reason this time," she said before she could stop herself. "There will be more time for us. You could still come see me. And I will look forward to the end of those eighty years and being with you again every day. But if I do this to make sure Jacob can live, there is no way I'll _ever _be able to see him again. Which is probably the best thing for my soul now, don't you think?"

He looked like he had been slapped. "I would never think that. Don't talk that way. Do you think this is what you _deserve_?"

She stared a moment, swallowing, and then turned around to open a new drawer and take out some more clothes.

"I am sorry you feel so strongly about this," Edward said, his voice panging with regret. "But if you expect me to respect your choice, then you must respect mine as well."

Something flickered through her head briefly, and a moment later she could tell from the way Edward stiffened all over that the second's consideration had not escaped from Alice's sight.

"And I would not bother trying that," he said. "You know Alice would take my side with this and never let you get away with it."

She closed the drawer with a frustrated slam before she continued to pack the few things she planned to take with her in silence.


	13. XII: cherchez la femme

chapter **XII **cherchez la femme

* * *

It was past 4:00 in the morning and Jacob had not been to sleep. Sam and Embry had come looking for him at his house and then found him outside as a wolf when they phased, immediately sinking into a nonsense vortex of nightmarish memories in his head that they could not even quite piece together into a logical story before he had quickly headed home and changed back. He knew soon enough all of the others in the pack would see everything, but he did not feel like explaining everything now. He did not want to talk about it.

Now Embry and Quil stood around him as he sat against the house on his porch. Sam was inside making coffee. They were all trying not to wake up Billy, who had gone enough nights without sleep lately. Others were inside, talking to each other in low voices. The whole pack seemed to hardly sleep these days and everyone always knew it when something happened, even during the dead hours of the night when nothing would be expected to happen and they would usually all be at home.

"I don't understand what happened," Collin was murmuring.

"Me neither," whispered Jared. "He and Bella got into some really bad fight or something. He doesn't want her to go, of course."

"But she's leaving anyway? Just like that?"

"I guess so. Whatever happened, I don't think it was the kind of goodbye he would have wanted."

All the while Leah's cold silence was what rang out from the inside of the house louder than anything else, any of the occasional words that Jacob could only partially make out through open windows.

"Just what did you say to her that was so bad?" Quil tried, seeming unable to keep quiet next to Jacob and his sunken, vacant eyes.

He just shook his head, staring off in the air. "I don't know," he muttered a little quickly. "I don't know what I said. I just couldn't stop talking. She was going to just walk away and…I had to do something. I couldn't shut up..."

"Do you think you even meant what you said?" Embry asked.

Quil looked up to meet eyes with him after he said it because there was something careful in his voice, holding back. Embry was one of the only ones so far who had seen Jacob's memories firsthand and there was a strange hint of anger in his face, like he felt like he could hit Jacob for something he did that he had only briefly and faintly been able to see.

"I don't know it doesn't matter," Jacob blurted out like one sentence. "I never thought she would actually…She's better than that."

"_You're _better than that."

"…Yeah." With his dull, low voice, it sounded like he was somehow mocking the sentiment.

He knew what Embry was wasting his anger trying to tell him was not that he should have known better but that he deserved better. But none of these things had seemed to matter at the time, when he could feel her slipping right out of his grasp and everything else in his life possibly losing all importance and meaning.

And now it was over. When she was paying so dearly for it, he did not know if the enjoyment in anything would ever completely return to what it had been before. And what others would say he was good for or might deserve, all these opportunities for happiness in the future, any hope of finding something else, _hope _itself. It felt like it was all gone and dead.

* * *

Near noon Edward could see that he was coming, and this was what he saw:

His wife, a certain face of hers he felt like he had never seen before now looking at him but not at _him_, in this other man's memory. A picture of her he kept tucked away inside his heart so it would always be there and still the same no matter how much she changed, no matter how much she drifted far away and out of his reach. Jacob Black was not dwelling on the darker things that did only briefly flicker through his thoughts as he was anticipating speaking to her again — an icy, silent kiss under the water and her scent burning his nose in the open air before it. Instead he was mostly remembering driftwood fires, her hair with the wind whipping it back as she rode on her motorcycle, the way her laugh had sounded with her old voice when she was still human. Before everything else, they were friends.

And he was mostly here for Sam, because he needed to know some things for sure, but Edward could see what he was the most worried about all the while. That things he had said might come to haunt her during all the years she never saw him again if she never knew for sure what to think of them. Maybe he was here to apologize. Maybe he just wanted her to last see him in a less hopeless condition, putting on a better show, so she would not have to be brought down by worrying so much about leaving him that way whenever she thought of him where she was going. He did not seem to quite know for sure.

But Edward did not care about all this at the moment because when he suddenly became aware of Jacob's presence as he approached their house it brought a much more dire concern. He just completely froze where he sat, aware of Jasper giving him a questioning look as he felt the icy fear overtake him, and did not get the chance to say anything of it before they all heard their guest coming outside and then the knock on the door.

"Were we…expecting one of them?" Rosalie asked in surprise, turning back to look at everyone else after opening the door and seeing him there.

Jacob did not wait for an invitation to come in before stepping right past her and going inside.

"No," Edward answered her stiffly. "We definitely were not."

"I won't have to stay long," Jacob said tiredly, his hands buried in his pockets. "We just need to know for sure what's happening now. We weren't sure if we can assume it's safe to tell Emily to come back—"

"I know," Edward said a little impatiently, in a way that could easily be mistaken for just sounding angry.

All of the others in the room just stared at the two of them looking at each other, their faces completely perplexed.

Jacob just sighed. "If you want to attack me because she's not here to stop you, go ahead and get it over with. Otherwise—"

"She's not here," Edward said, urgently cutting him off. "She left. She told me she was going to talk to you again."

Jacob's surprise was very apparent on his face. "What exactly for?"

"How long ago was that?" Carlisle asked Edward, now starting to look just as worried as him.

"Almost half an hour ago," he said.

Jacob's eyes widened as he was starting to get it. "You mean…"

Before he even finished saying it, Edward started rushing up the stairs. As he had already been sure about because he had just been in the room, all of the things Bella had gotten ready to take with her were still sitting out where she had left them. But there was one item he was sure he knew she would never want to leave without…

He tore open one of the small top drawers of her dresser where she always kept the necklace with the diamond heart he had given her. Naked wood at the bottom of the drawer stared up at him — Nothing in there.

"_Alice!_" he roared as he quickly joined the others back downstairs.

She was just now coming home, and as if on cue, she charged inside from the garage right after he said her name. "Oh _no!_" she was saying, practically vibrating in shock at the same time that she just looked angry with herself. "I can't believe she could_ do _that! If I'd been any more careful about watching her it would never have worked!"

Carlisle started to ask, "What in the _world _did she—?"

"She tricked me!" Alice explained. "She made me think I couldn't see her doing _anything _anymore, and then she told Edward she was going to see him" — she pointed at Jacob — "so it made _sense_—"

Edward, who knew this already, impatiently took her arm to make her look at him and demanded, "What do you see her doing_ now?_"

Pacified, she just looked at him sadly a moment before answering. "She's trying to find where they are to meet with them early…She's going to tell them she agrees to go with them only with the condition that they will never allow you to join them, too."

They all stared in shock even though it was what most of them were already worried was happening.

"She's going _alone?_" Jacob asked.

"Of course," Edward said darkly.

"I don't understand how you didn't see this before," he said to Alice, his voice tight and restrained.

"I see things as soon as people make the decisions that will cause them," she explained in a hurry. "Then I won't see anything in someone's future again until I get the idea to consciously check on what they are doing."

"It wasn't your fault," Carlisle said. "You could never have predicted that she would think of a way to work around what you could see like that."

"...No," Edward agreed quietly.

Everyone went silent and still a moment. Jacob continued to look extremely frustrated before he finally looked at Edward and just said with desperation, "_Well?_"

Edward only shook his head a little mechanically, not looking at him. "I…do not know what is the right thing to do."

"She didn't even say goodbye," he assumed.

"I only need to get on a plane to see her again."

"No," Jacob said in a strangely decided way, making everyone else give him a strange look. "It shouldn't happen this way. You shouldn't have made her feel like she has to run away from you."

"Insisting that I go with her was the least I could do to make this option seem even more impossible for her!" he said. "What would you have done? I am completely helpless in this situation."

Before Jacob could help it he started, "_I _would never have—"

"Let's not go_ there_, Jacob Black," he said dangerously, interrupting him. "You know perfectly well how eager I was to bring her into this life in the first place. This is exactly what I meant to protect her from."

Jacob just seethed for a moment, letting thoughts pass through his head that he knew he could hear even though he didn't say them aloud._ You can't protect her from everything. But this is the one thing you should have been able to protect her from. I still have never imprinted. There was a life for her with me. And she would still be Bella. She would die still Bella…_

But Edward knew all of this already. It made no difference. They could only decide what they thought was the best thing to do now.

"Do we just let her go?" Emmett asked quietly. The edge of intense sadness in his voice made Rosalie reach over and grasp his hand; her own face looked numbly blank, and the whole room was a collection of somber, defeated expressions then.

Jacob looked at Alice again. "You can't see where she is right now?"

She shook her head. "She doesn't know exactly where she's going to find them," she said. "So everything before her meeting them just keeps changing really fast…All I can see for sure is that she seems to be taking a very indirect path just to make it harder for anyone to follow and catch up with her."

He slowly met eyes with Edward again, and they just looked at each other with a gradually settling understanding as Edward could hear everything going through his head.

"Right," he said. "If only to say goodbye…"

"Where are they supposed to be?" Jacob asked.

"Directly Southeast from here, quite a long way…but probably not even an hour's run for us if going directly there."

"I might be able to get help."

Edward took his cell phone out of his pocket. "Would you be able to keep this on you? In the pocket of your jeans, perhaps? So that we can contact each other if one of our groups finds her."

Jacob looked at it with a cocked eyebrow before taking it from his hand. "Is that really the best idea you have?" he said almost a little humorously; after all the time the werewolves spent close enough for Edward to just read their minds, it felt strange to have to resort to technology for communication.

Edward just smirked dryly. "Call Carlisle's number to reach us if you have any luck."

They agreed that the Cullens would go looking mostly in the exact direction she was headed and also going off to the East a little, while Jacob and any of his friends who came with him would go looking more to the South. He had not even phased to come to the house now, but he just left his car there and quickly changed to charge home.

He immediately felt the presence of a few others who were also out now, Brady and Jared, and then in their minds he saw their surprise at finding out what was happening.

He could tell Brady was about to complain, thinking something about how Jacob was just going to try to convince her not to go one more time. He didn't give him the chance to protest before giving them an order.

_Get everybody together at Sam's house_, he said, for he knew that was where most of them had already been just before he left.

It took only a few more minutes after Jacob had arrived there for everyone else to show up and get inside and assembled together in their human bodies. Some of them looked angry, not even willing to look up at Jacob as he spoke to them. Whether they all wished harm or unhappiness on Bella or not, he knew some of them had been unable to help but be relieved when it looked like there was no chance of her staying. Some of them thought Jacob was going to just blow it now. Maybe it would only be so easy for her to leave if she didn't have to look anybody she loved in the face right before turning around and doing it. And as much as Edward was trying not to do anything desperate, there might have been no telling how he may try to stop her now that the time left was down to so little.

"I'm not going to order anyone to do anything," he said once he had fully explained the situation to everyone. "If you think we should just let her go, consider this your chance to have a vote about it. You can stay."

Leah scoffed. "Sure, that's fair," she said sarcastically, rolling her eyes.

Jacob just looked at her calmly for a moment, numbly unaffected by her right now. "Look...I don't even know exactly what's going to happen if we get to her. I don't know if there's any way we can still convince her to stay. But if she's going to leave, I just don't think it should be like this. I am just asking any of you to please help me."

There was a long moment of silence as they all took this in. Then Embry easily spoke up.

"Yeah," he said. "Of course."

Beside him, Quil nodded. "Me, too. I don't like this whole idea, either. You should at least have a chance to…"

"Chance to what?" Leah asked, butting in loudly. "Say goodbye? He already should have done that a long time ago."

"_Shut up_, Leah," Embry said.

"Embry, it's okay," Jacob said tiredly before looking around to see if anyone else was going to volunteer.

Sam raised up a hand.

Jacob looked at him, almost wanting to say something to assure him he shouldn't feel any obligation to.

Leah spoke first. "Come on, Sam. Don't think about her. Think about Emily. And your _baby_."

"It doesn't matter how everything turns out with us," Jacob said, looking straight at him and seeming to be pretending Leah wasn't there. "I'm sure no matter how things might go in a final battle, they're still going to do everything they can to make sure nothing happens to her."

"I already said I'd help you," Sam just said, sounding like he was trying not to think too much about it.

"Are you all crazy?" Leah said. She gestured toward Jacob. "Can't you see_ he's _crazy?"

"Leah, please," Sam said quietly.

"She's as good as dead as it is, you idiot!" she yelled at Jacob's face. "So why can't you just_ move on _and stop worrying about what happens to her?"

"She's walking on her two feet just fine," he said coolly.

"Oh, are those your only standards for what you're willing to let_ kiss _you? Do you know how sick you are?"

"This is irrelevant," Jared said in a disturbed voice.

"That's some way to talk about someone who's willing to give up so much for _you_," Quil said to her.

Leah laughed — a disturbing and fake grinding against silence of a sound, not at all expressing real amusement. "Yeah. Right. Like that should make me so grateful when it's only because of that bloodsucking whore that we got into this in the first place. Don't you realize she wouldn't be doing this at all if it wasn't for him?" she said, pointing at Jacob.

His next breath he took shook him a little as he had to struggle to not get too angry. "We're wasting time," he just made himself say. "Let's go."

"Wait," Jared said, standing up. "I'll come, too."

"And me," Collin said, following him.

As they headed for the door Leah started shaking a little in her chair, her teeth clenched and hands in fists. The others still close to her quickly backed away from her as a violent tremor started in her back and they immediately recognized what was happening.

"Calm down, Leah," Jacob said, meaning it as an order, and she immediately relaxed.

She let out a heavy, exasperated sigh as she sat back in the chair. As everyone left they all heard it when she muttered under her breath, "Necro."

When Embry was the last one out and closed the door behind them, it was with a slightly hard slam.

"Jesus," Jared sighed once they were outside, glancing over at Sam. "How'd you ever date that monster?"

"_Hey_," Jacob said. "Leave her alone."

It was the first time since Leah joined the pack that they had all met together as only eight. Sam just stayed in a dead silence beside them, not looking at anyone.

* * *

Bella ran.

As she rushed forward on and on, her head filled with senseless, distorted and bizarre images. She saw herself as Juliet, stabbing herself in the heart with her tear-filled eyes on Romeo's pale and dead face, desperate to not have to live another second without him. Paris, her only chance to go on living, left alone to mourn her forever and always dwell on everything that could have been, if only.

She saw herself as the third wife in the legend of the first wolf, stabbing herself again and spilling her own blood all over the ground, this time for a very different reason. To save someone else she loved rather than save herself from life without him. Not the same image, she told herself.

She imagined two figures of herself, the human one and the vampire, wrestling together. The human winning. The old Bella with tears of pain streaking down her face as she drowned the other in a pool of blood, pinning her down with her hands at her pale throat keeping her under it, saying,_ You will never hurt him. You will never hurt any of them again. You did this to yourself, can't you understand?_ And the pale white arms flailing desperately, struggling to defeat the other and cling to life, whatever she had left of it.

They were like horrific images from nightmares she would have now if she could still dream. As she concentrated on nothing but moving and had nothing to look at, her mind perfectly liberated to just wander, they flooded her whole mind until she almost forgot where she was and what she was really doing.

She was pulled forcefully out of it all when she heard something very large running to her left, something that could only be one thing, and turned her head.

She gasped and stopped, immediately jumping behind a tree and then freezing in place. She was sure she had just seen one of the wolves far off in the distance. She was pretty sure whoever it was had gotten a glimpse of her, too; the sound of the four gigantic paws running had stopped.

She looked quickly around, wondering how many others were close but seeing none of them. She knew it wouldn't matter, as they all would have seen her now anyway. And as if in response to this thought, from far off in the very distant forest but still very loud, a long, pleading howl ripped out from one of them and echoed resonantly.

She knew with a deep conviction that it was him, talking to her. The other one, the only wolf near enough for her to see him, was still not coming toward her. He knew with this much distance between them, he could easily lose her again if he went after her.

Bella leaned her head back against the trunk of the tree, closing her eyes with a miserable sigh. In the blackness behind her eyelids, the disturbing images attacked her again. The dark places inside of her which were such an elusive mystery to most, which she herself sometimes did not know at all. In that moment, it felt almost like the sound of Jacob calling to her in that sad howl had come from inside there, from inside of her. It was like he was telling her, _You already know that you can only turn around._

Only then did she realize what it meant that they were out here. Edward. Her family all had to be looking for her now, too. The thought brought an unexpected wrench of pain deep inside her chest. She looked down at her left hand and the ring that was there, thinking again of the third wife of the first Quileute werewolf.

His _wife_…

And she thought then that maybe she had not only been doing it to save her husband, nor only so that she would not have to live on after he was dead. Perhaps her reasons had been a little of both. Perhaps it had not been just an entirely brave and noble act.

All of these faces came into her mind, people who were out trying to get to her before she left them behind without even any last words. She turned to face the direction she had been running before, feeling already like it was going to be so much harder to force herself to go on now. She knew, finally, that there was only death ahead of her, but maybe some kind of life still behind her to go back to. She was only leaving the last of her humanity behind, with everyone she loved. That part of her was not the one smothering the other and winning the fight now.

Seeing the wolf far off to her left move, she immediately turned and ran again.

* * *

_Don't lose her!_ Jacob said to Quil when he saw, through his eyes, Bella appear from behind the tree she had vanished behind a moment before. But just as soon she was off again.

He growled to himself softly in frustration. But at least now they had an idea of where she was. He and the others close to him started running toward where they knew Quil was. It was twenty seconds later that he heard Edward's phone ringing where it was tucked inside the pocket of his jeans.

_Keep following her trail_, he thought to the others before changing back as quickly as possible. He could not help but sound extremely annoyed when he answered the phone.

"What? We're trying. Quil just found her but she—"

"I know," answered Edward's voice calmly, with a noticeable lightness of what could be relief in it. "We are not far. Don't worry. Alice no longer sees her going to them."

"What?" he asked, feeling a little strange for the way his voice echoed through the forest when he said it so loud.

"She sees her going to First Beach. And then…disappearing. Though she is much more sure about that this time."

Jacob paused, taking that in. "I guess she's waiting for me, then?" he said, emanating uncertainty in his voice. He didn't know if Alice's visions could really work like that.

Edward was a dead silence far away, saying nothing in response to that at first. "I am not sure what happened," he finally said. "But…thank you. I will wait for her at home, if you will tell her."

"…Sure."

"And…you can just leave my phone on the ground there so I can come find it, please."

Jacob gave a low laugh after flipping the phone shut.

* * *

He knew exactly where she would be.

She was sitting so completely still on the driftwood bench where they used to sit together such a long time ago that she could have been a statue. Only her hair was moving, lightly blowing up from her shoulders and back in the breeze. She must have known he was there as he slowly approached her from behind. But she still did not move or react, not even as he came beside her and then sat next to her in silence, so readily expecting his presence that it almost seemed like she was not aware of it.

At first they just stayed silent, and only in that moment did he remember how she had sworn she could never speak to him again. Only the fact that she was waiting here gave him any confidence in sitting next to her.

Finally she slowly turned her head to look at him, just examining the look on his face.

"Hi," he said softly, leaning over a little so that his face was almost level with hers as he looked to the side.

It was like something tight held around her was suddenly broken and released; she closed her eyes with a relieved kind of look and leaned forward a little, like she was letting herself fall. He leaned in toward her as well until their foreheads were touching, and they stayed like this with their eyes closed for a while, feeling strangely at peace just for now in the dark behind their eyelids and with the sounds of the ocean and seagulls around them.

She leaned back away from him when his scent that close to her face became too much, her head clearing as she looked back forward. "How did you find out what I was doing?" she asked. "Did they actually contact you?"

He shook his head. "I was…well, I was _sort of _coming over to see you. But mostly just to ask about what we should do."

"Oh," she said. "I guess that pretty easily blew my cover."

"Yeah," he said with a short laugh.

"…Why were you 'sort of' coming to see me?" she asked.

He shrugged, shaking his head. "To…sort of apologize. I don't know. I'm not sure if I can honestly tell you I regret saying those things, but I do really wish I hadn't felt like I needed to say them…"

"It's okay," she said, not needing to hear any more of it. "I…I hope you know I didn't mean to hit you."

He smirked. "Don't worry. I guess you still owed me a real punch from that first time."

She raised her brow. "You think so? Let me break your hand and then maybe we'll be even."

He laughed lightly, the sound seeming to take a lot of energy to get out of him. Then they went silent, both staring out at the sea in silence for a while.

This place. She had not been here and seen this exact spot that was theirs in so long, and it brought back so many things that had felt completely lost before, made her remember things from her human life she was surprised to still remember clearly. It surely would have ended up being an even more important place to her if everything had been different. She probably could have lost her virginity here. She could have been his first instead of somebody else, whoever. She was not so numb to herself that she had never imagined these things or could not imagine them now. Lying on a blanket out here on a night when so many stars were out that distant, dark shapes of rocks and mountains that usually would not be visible at night were defined against them. In autumn nobody else would be coming to the beach and it would be all theirs, his heat enough to keep both of them warm. But the feeling that they still just might get caught would have been part of it, just like skipping school to ride off on a motorcycle and escape to anywhere else, rushing to the boundary line to be free with the wind in her hair.

She wondered how long, for how many years after he was not even alive anymore, she would still be keeping him with her this way, imagining exactly how moments of their life together would have been before she could even think twice and stop herself from picturing it.

With a sudden thought, she broke the silence to ask, "You know the legend of the protector who was turned into a vampire?"

Jacob looked at her with surprise. "How do you know about that one?" he said.

"Emily explained it to me once. You know...when I was worrying a lot about the extent of what kind of damage a vampire could do to one of you."

He smirked dryly. "I really didn't know what to think of that one when my dad told me about it. It seemed kind of crazy to be at all true. But now I've actually been thinking about it a little lately."

"So have I. The more I think about it now...the more I don't find it so hard to believe that it could be true."

Jacob leaned over and rested his chin on his fists. "...Yeah."

"Do you think...?" Bella sighed, hesitating. "I know this sounds kind of ridiculous. But do you think it's possible that the female vampire was only about to kill him when she first saw him because…he was her singer?"

He did not answer right away, still looking far away like he was thinking about it. Then he finally said, "It still doesn't explain why another vampire would fight over him with her."

She nodded. "I know."

"But I did think of that already myself. Now that we know such a thing is actually possible..." He looked at her with a tired grin, and she smiled back briefly. "The legend does seem to make a little more sense that way. Who knows?"

Bella looked away from him, her gaze joining his so they were both watching the flowing waves. "And they became lovers," she said very quietly.

Something very visibly changed on Jacob's face when she glanced back at him, but for some reason she did not think she could stand to look very long.

"Yes," he said in a voice just as low.

"Like Edward and me," she said in somewhat of a sigh.

He looked to the side at her. "But look at me._ I'm _still human."

She managed to smile again. At this moment, it really did feel like some kind of a miracle that he was still both that and alive. "Yeah, you are."

After another drawn-out silence, he asked her, "So what made you come back? You finally came to your senses?"

"…Yeah," she said quietly. "I guess. Maybe only because of you."

"Really?" he asked, sounding doubtful.

She looked over at him again, her face full of a sudden pain that made any remainder of a smile on his face fall. "Even if you shouldn't have said it, in a way you were right about almost everything you said."

He just looked at her, waiting for her to explain as she tried to think of how to say it. She looked down from his eyes before she could go on. "You see…I have this really difficult problem. I have two soul mates. One of them is someone I love so much that I will stop at just about nothing to keep anything from coming between us. And the other is someone I love so much that nothing _can_ come between us, no matter how much we try to stay away from each other and no matter how different we are. No matter how much we might want to just forget.

"Ever since I started seeing you again it's changed everything," she went on, speaking faster as if to get it out before she could have any reservations about admitting it. "It's like the past just came right back and grabbed hold of me again. Every second I'm with you all I want to do is something very much against my better judgment. And I don't just mean hurting you. I've felt like I'm going a little insane. This isn't me! But it _is_, too. Nothing has changed, and at the same time it _all_ has…"

He just stared at her sadly as she looked down at her feet, and he felt like he could see the tears welling in her eyes that would not anymore. All of her suddenly looked so surrendered and beaten. "I...I want you," she said in a soft, faltering voice. "You already know this. But…it's never hurt this much before. And I_ know _I can't have you. But that doesn't even make any difference anymore. It's not even rational anymore…

"And maybe you were right, and that's why I was going to leave. Maybe I was just…trying to walk away from this problem because I can't see it getting any more bearable for me. But I know it's not going to solve anything if I just leave and never see you again. If I have to make myself never see you again…"

She sighed with resignation, looking back up at him, right into his eyes. "Maybe I'm just not even strong enough to do that," she said, so quietly it was almost in a whisper. "I can hear your…your heartbeat in my head all the time. Can you believe that? My recent memories of you are the ones that are perfectly clear and vivid, and when I think of you I automatically remember those recent things. I remember the nights I've stayed by you while you're sleeping and I hear the way your heart always sounds. It's like having a song stuck in my head that won't go away. This is one of those things that…God, maybe I'm not even aware of it half the time and I'm just so glad that Edward can't hear it. I knew if I went away, that's all I was going to think about after a while. If your heart is still beating. How many beats it has left. If you're okay now and everything is even worth it…"

Sudden warmth around her made her speech stop. He had circled an arm around her waist, pulling her a little closer toward him. "Bella," he said in a desperate-sounding whisper, "don't do that."

"What?" she asked a little vacantly, drawn out of her inner thoughts.

He looked down at her arms as she lowered them. "You were holding yourself around your chest," he said, his voice slow and reluctant. "Like you used to when…"

Even after everything she had said, she looked at him like she could not believe it; as if he had just accused her of something unthinkable. But she knew the rest of his sentence that he couldn't finish. When thinking about _him._ The other one.

"I…" Hardly anything would come out of her mouth in response. She just shook her head and her posture sunk as she looked right down at her feet again.

"I don't know what I'm doing here, Jacob," she said. "I don't even know why I turned around. I just couldn't do it. And I have no idea what I'm going to do now."

He let out a long, heavy breath that sounded somewhat surrendering, raising his arm from her waist to put it around her shoulders. "Don't worry, honey," he said softly. "It's going to be okay."

She automatically shook her head quickly. "That's the same thing you said to me the last time I had to walk away from you."

"Just trust that things won't be that bad. Stay. Stay with me as my friend."

"You know we can't be friends, Jacob," she said miserably.

He was quiet, unable to argue. Then he said, "You're right. We can't. We can't be anything besides what we are. And that's just what we'll be. Even if nothing can come of it. Even if I can never be the same thing to you that he is. Even if it really hurts. It could be really ugly and painful, I know that. But I've tried to completely let go of you to make things easier before and it just doesn't work."

He reached up and took her face in one of his hands, holding her jaw to keep her looking right at him. "That's why you've got to stop doing this," he said firmly. "Stop giving up your life for someone else and just live your _own_ life, whatever that is now. I don't want to mourn you anymore. I think I believed it would make it easier for me if I just thought of you as being dead, and I wasn't sure if I could handle seeing you again like this, especially if it was only to see you die again. But you're still alive. You're _not_ dead. And I think I needed to see you again. I need to be able to see that you're okay so I can move on with my own life."

She clasped her hands tightly together in her lap, looking down at them and shaking her head slowly. "It's so hard to believe…right now while I'm sitting next to you…that things will just be alright." She glanced back at him with an attemptedly light expression. "Your presence can make it kind of difficult to think reasonably."

He did not smile or laugh, because her face went right back to showing the heavy pain unbearably weighing her down now. "No," he said, reaching down to her lap to take her hand and holding it tightly. "Listen. It_ will _be okay. Maybe not great, but okay. I promise. You're going to do the responsible thing this time. You're going to go back to Edward and the rest of your family instead of abandoning them for someone else. You're going to stay with the person you married and never betray him and not betray yourself by becoming something you know you shouldn't. Because even if I would never exactly hold it against you, I couldn't keep loving you the way I do if you did that and just made the same kind of mistake all over again, even if it was for me. This is the only way you can have me. It's the only way you can_ keep _me. You see?"

She looked into his eyes that were so sad even as he was able to sound encouraging for her and knew that he was saying more than it sounded like. This was not just about her leaving her coven to go with the Volturi. Even if it was impossible to ignore, the way she wanted him so badly was completely illogical, nonviable. It was like yearning for something that does not even exist in this world. Even with everything that had changed they both unthinkably still loved each other. But that love could only kill itself the moment they touched each other if they ever did, if he ever actually wanted that now.

But in other ways, she knew she had already taken him, without even meaning to. It was not enough to be considered a betrayal but still enough to bind him to her forever. She had never once touched or kissed him with the intention of making him hers, as she almost had done the one night long ago when she was with him in his car with butterflies in her stomach and her head for once quiet after hearing the last of the haunting voices. But now there was an invisible scar on his shoulder, healed on the outside but something he could feel and would always know was there. She had done almost as much as spilling her own blood like the third wife, everything she could do, and risked everything, for him. He lived now because of her. At least in some way, she knew he would belong to her always.

"Maybe it's just strange now to think about going back to doing what's right," she said. "It almost feels like there's no use, after everything else…"

For some reason, he laughed at that lightly. "It won't be so hard. That's natural for you."

Her face just looked defiant, not accepting it. "You really think so?"

"You're not a horrible person, Bella. I mean…you're definitely not an angel, either. But what does it matter? You're still loved. And you're needed here."

She went silent, looking down as she reflected on all of this. He stared at her a long time and then touched her face again, causing her to look at him again.

"Please stop looking so sad," he said, sounding sorrowful and beaten; after everything he had just tried to tell her to make it all not seem so bad, she still looked just as hopeless.

"Jacob," she murmured; it was so quiet that he saw her mouth move but couldn't hear it.

"What?" he asked softly, leaning in toward her.

She spoke again, not much more audibly, close to his ear. "Jacob…Will you just…hold me?"

He did, pulling her close against him into a hug that did not feel as suffocatingly crushing as it used to when he hugged her but was still tight and strong, unhesitant unlike before. As she let herself wrap her arms around his back, she let out a long, relaxing breath. It felt like she had been holding her breath for so long, not allowing herself to let it out, and was only now finally breathing again. She relaxed into his form like she could be molded perfectly into it, like she belonged like this and was releasing herself into her natural shape. She needed to know this now, if never again. The thought of the still present and undefeated threat to his life was more unbearable than ever before as she closed her eyes and dissolved in the comfort of being this close to him. At the same time, the thought made her want to never let go and diminished any guilt about how wrong letting herself have just this much right now might be.

Jacob was breathing just as deeply as her, like he was sighing sadly, as he ran his hand slowly up and down her back. "Does it still hurt as much like this?" he asked quietly.

"No," she whispered. "Not as much right now..."

The useless feelings that they usually kept dormant, the pang of almost-regret, longing for what could have been but could never be at the same time, overwhelmed them for one stinging instance at the same time. And he raised his hand to run it through her hair, whispering, "God, Bella…"

All the while she could not even hold him as tightly as possible, still having to restrain herself in a way because she could hurt him. She finally knew in this moment that she was never going to be doing that to him anymore.


	14. XIII: diminuendo

chapter **XIII **diminuendo

* * *

Bella's hand found itself at her throat, touching the hard diamond heart worn there, as she walked up the porch of the house and went inside. The entire home was tensely quiet, and though everyone who was downstairs to see her come in looked at her with expressions of relief they did not move to embrace her or even say anything after her entrance. A quick look around and a moment taken to listen closely to everything happening in the house told her that Edward was up in their room.

As she went up the stairs to meet him, realizing that he probably knew just about everything that had happened between her and Jacob in the past few days now, she wondered what he would do without really having any doubt that she already knew. Maybe she wished she could expect or be afraid of something else. Maybe she wanted him to react in a more unreasonable and passionate, human way, Othello strangling Desdemona. Shout at her. Call her some horrible words. Grab her and shake her violently, why why why. Go get a gun hidden somewhere in the house and go after the son of a bitch and shoot him. Or shoot her. As if, if only. Maybe if he would at least get angry with her, it might make her feel half as alive as she used to always feel with him.

Having heard her coming, Edward was standing in the middle of the room waiting with his arms crossed when she came in. She faced him and froze for a second before reaching back and closing the door behind her, as if that alone would make much of a difference in how private this conversation would be.

They looked at each other. Edward was guarded, expectant. He looked prepared for anything. Reluctantly but completely accepting. Somehow, it made her almost furious.

Him. Him. He used to be everything. Everything, and yet he couldn't even hold onto her. Never completely. Things were never going to go back to the way they were at the bright, innocent beginning of love. The fairy tale was over. Perhaps it had never been true in the first place, but now all the belief in it was lost.

"Why did you have to leave me?" she demanded suddenly, hardly even knowing where it was coming from.

Edward just kept looking at her in silence, his face looking stricken.

"Why did you have to do it?" she said, and though the words were accusing her tone was completely calm, sad instead of heated with anger. "If you hadn't, all this never would have been a problem. If you had just been willing to discuss with me why you had problems with me being turned instead of deciding for me it wasn't right and keeping the subject closed. I wasn't a_ child._"

"I know," he said quietly. This was nothing that both of them hadn't known for quite a while, but that was not that point. Neither of them had ever said these things before.

"I had to find out from_ Carlisle_ why you had such a big problem with it," she went on, shaking her head. Even as her voice started to rise a little, she sounded like she was too tired of thinking back on these things to be truly angry about them anymore; the time to be angry about it had been missed and then passed. "I remember. You just made the decision for me. You can't do that! And then_ Jacob _happened. Jacob Black...He'll never go away!"

He finally looked deeply hurt for an instant, and she knew she didn't even have to say this; he knew it, and he would always accept it. He would always forgive.

Even now, in the stretch of silence during which they just kept looking at each other regretfully, she knew that he could not be given all of the blame at all. She had been just as ridiculous as him. How much of her love for him had always only been so strong because of the absence of love she had for herself? If it weren't for all that, he could have eventually come back just to see how she was and found her with Jacob and doing reasonably well. He would have stayed away from her for good. But she had thought she was nothing without him. She had never thought she could possibly be good enough for someone else after she had been ruined by him, that she was capable of loving anyone else or had anything to give on her own. She knew she would have realized she was in love with Jacob a lot sooner if she had believed she could be.

Edward shook his head as he stared at her. "_Please_ tell me what you are thinking," he said sadly.

She looked down at the floor a little absently. "I assume Alice was already able to tell I'm staying."

"Yes," he sighed.

Bella gave a tiny, unenthused shrug, shaking her head a little. "And that's it, I guess. I'm still here, but I don't..."

She could not look at him anymore then. She turned and walked over to the couch, sitting down on the arm of it with her head bowed down looking at the floor. "I don't know what to tell you now. I feel like I can only hurt you by being honest with you anymore..."

He was suddenly in front of her in a heartbeat. She still did not look up at his face, but her head fell against him as she closed her eyes. He touched her hair gently as she reached up and grabbed onto his shirt. "I'm so sorry," she whispered against him.

"So am I," he said softly.

"I wish...There's nothing I want more than to be able to tell you it was harder to run away than it was to turn around and come back. But I'm still so afraid I can't even tell you..."

He sat down next to her, but now he was the one who would not meet eyes with her. He seemed to take a moment to gather himself together and prepare himself to say something, and then it came out in a delicate whisper. "You are so unhappy now..."

"Of course I'm unhappy," she said. "But don't think that means—"

"I don't want you to just feel obligated to me," he said, cutting her off to get it out while he still could stand to say it. "If you really do not...need me now as much as you..."

He could not seem to finish, perhaps because there was absolutely nothing to do about it if his fears were confirmed anyway. But she didn't give him a chance to finish, giving an exhausted-sounding sigh. "Don't you get it yet?" she asked.

He looked up at her, his brow creasing in a perplexed look.

"I _don't _need you," she said, wincing innerly when his eyes filled with that sharp pain again. "_Please_ — don't look at me like that. If I really did need you, completely helplessly and unconditionally, then I wouldn't have any reason to feel bad about what happened to Paul and Seth. The whole pack. Their families...But why does it matter? I want to be with you. I came back. I _choose _this. Shouldn't that mean _everything?_ Edward...it was so_ hard_..."

All at once he was holding her, smothering her unreservedly, and as she buried her face into his chest she murmured, "I must smell so bad..."

"I don't care," he said calmly.

"I kissed him."

"I know. I don't care."

Her words started coming out frantically and quickly. "How can I _do _this? I don't know what I'm going to do. If he dies..."

"He won't die." It was the only thing to say.

"But if he does..."

"_Shhh_," he just said, rubbing her back.

They could no longer dissolve into each other like she thought she could remember they once did, until they became something completely new that hardly had anything left of what they each were on their own as individuals. She was still her and she still hurt. But it was enough then.

* * *

Jacob got a call from the bar in the afternoon.

"You just took off in the middle of your shift yesterday," Scott said to him, carefully reserving judgment in his tone.

He tried to figure out quickly how to get around this. Scott had always liked him and it didn't sound like he was fired just yet, so he knew he might have a chance to save himself.

"Yeah, I'm really sorry about that," he said, innerly cursing himself because it was so impossible to sound like he sincerely cared about this at the moment. "I had a really bad...emergency."

Scott was silent a few seconds before replying. "That really isn't like you. Are you _sure _everything's okay?"

Jacob let out a long, tired breath, resigning. "No, actually..."

He knew he should not have been entirely surprised when she showed up later that day. But it was still a strange shock for her to appear in this setting when someone knocked on the door and he saw through the window that Lilah was standing on his porch.

He opened the door and stared, a little speechless at first, suddenly aware of the floor under his feet again like the sight of her was waking him up from something.

"Hi," she said softly, her arms crossed. She looked so unusually unconfident, and also very sad.

"Hey," he said just as quietly.

"Um...I'm sorry for just dropping by. I know I should have called first but my phone isn't..."

She seemed unable to finish, and he got the distinct impression that she was just now realizing how stupid this might be and wanted to just turn around.

"It's okay," he said, shaking his head.

Then they just looked at each other another awkward moment before she finally explained, "I heard...at work..."

He nodded. He had told Scott some story about two friends of his getting killed in a car crash. Of course the word had probably gotten around to everybody there by now.

"You want to come in?" he said.

Lilah had never been inside his house before. She only knew where it was because of one time he'd had to rush back here after picking her up for work because he had forgotten his wallet. As they went into the kitchen, he saw her stealing curious glances at photos that were hanging on the wall and taped up on his fridge.

Something about her looked so different and wrong. Her face was full of only partially registered shock like she'd just been hit in the face. Then when they were both leaning against the counter on opposite sides of the tiny kitchen, she looked up at him at last and looked strangely regretful.

"How are you doing?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Not quite so terrible now."

He wondered right after saying it if that would sound like a weird thing to say. Of course, he couldn't explain to her how things had all looked a lot worse yesterday.

She shook her head a little. "I'm really sorry...Were these...These were the two friends you had visiting you?"

He took a moment to remember. "Oh. No. Different ones."

She sighed heavily, looking down sadly. "I feel like a real asshole."

He raised his brow in surprise. "Why?"

"I don't know. Part of me kind of doubted...I wondered if you were just making it up to get out of work or something. Even though I can't exactly see you doing that. I mean...Scott said you told him this happened a few days ago, but I've seen you and..."

He realized all at once how strange this must have looked to her. Something very different in her face...

"Are you...mad at me?" he asked uncertainly, knowing that the question was a little ridiculous but unable to think of another way of asking it.

"No," she said, a little too quickly, shaking her head. "I just wanted to stop by long enough to say...you know, give you my...my..."

She gestured with her hands like she was trying to pull the right words out of the air, and he suggested, "Condolences?"

"Uh. Yeah. Shit." She shook her head again like she despised saying it. "As weirdly..._formal_ as that sounds. I don't know what you say here. I just thought I should stop by and let you know that...I can be bothered with these kind of things, in case you actually need somebody to listen."

"Sure...Sure," he said. His brow creased as he peered closely at her. "Are you sure nothing's wrong?"

She shook her head once again, looking down at the floor. "No. Forget it..."

"What?" he pressed.

Lilah shrugged, a gesture trying to make it seem like no big deal even as she looked clearly embarrassed, nervously running her fingers back through her short hair. "I _told_ myself I wouldn't...It's just that when Scott mentioned this to me he was assuming I already knew all about it. And he was surprised to see I obviously had no idea. I felt...kind of stupid. Because I've been_ talking_ to you the past few days having no idea, and..."

"Oh," he said, sighing a little. "Listen, I would have said something, but—"

"No, it's fine," she said firmly. "I understand if you didn't want anybody to know before. I do..."

Then he realized fully why this might be bothering her. Maybe she wasn't supposed to be anybody. Or maybe she was. Maybe she was supposed to be here when he needed support from somebody or maybe she was expected to disappear in times like this when things got hard. They had never had a chance to figure this out before, and maybe without meaning to he had decided it for her.

"It's just that I've been kind of worried about you," she admitted with some obvious hesitation. "Everybody's noticed you acting really out of it, and I figured you had to just be keeping quiet about something...But I never imagined it could be something _this_ bad. I mean, if_ I _was going through something like this, I might expect that you'd be interested to at least know about it..."

There was a slight dryness in her tone that was starting to make him cringe inside a little. "Stop it, Lilah," he sighed.

"What?" she said, merely looking surprised by his reaction.

"Why do you have to make it sound so...? I mean...come on. I care a lot about you. Are you honestly surprised to hear that?"

She just shrugged again, more heavily. "I don't know if there's much at all that would surprise me to hear about you."

That stopped him, rendering him silent for a second. "...Yeah," he just said, like he was agreeing with it.

For a brief moment, he tried to imagine it, just to see if he could picture it at all. Just blurting it out, or even slowly building up to it. _"Yes. I know. I know nothing about me seems to make any sense. That's because you can't even have any idea what really goes on in my life. My friends weren't actually killed in a car accident. They got torn apart by vampires. Yes. Vampires. Real ones. And me...Well, this is the craziest part..."_

It was almost funny to think about doing it. Almost.

"Maybe you shouldn't be here," he said quietly.

She stared at him, trying to read his face. She clearly knew he didn't mean it was an inconvenient time.

"Why?" she asked, softly but fearlessly.

_"Are you breaking up with me?"_ he heard in the distant past.

He crossed his arms, hesitating a while. "You're a smart girl. You've noticed I don't tell you that much about myself."

She just raised her brow and gave a small nod.

"So don't you ever worry about _why_ I almost always seem to be keeping something from you? Maybe it's actually something pretty bad. Maybe I'm not the kind of person you really want to be hanging around with."

She actually started to look a little disturbed then, and he could guess it was because there was genuine-looking guilt on his face. "Don't say that," she said sadly; it wasn't clear if she was trying to convince him or trying to convince herself, refusing to accept it. "I've...I've _known_ really bad people. I don't know if I'm just cursed that way or what, but I don't have a lot of decent people in my life, you know. You're the only really good guy I know."

His stomach clutched a little nervously after he heard the words. Crap. What if it was like that? What if he was her knight in goddamn shining armor? The worst thing...

"If I were that good, maybe I would have just left you alone a long time ago," he said.

She shook her head, looking bewildered. "What are you talking about?"

He sighed, scratching the back of his head unsurely. "Lilah, is there...something more you want from me?"

As she kept looking at him, her face slowly changed as she realized what he meant. Then she also sighed, crossing her arms and looking to the side. "Oh, man," she said, eyes flickering back up at him. "Are you asking me _this? _Now?"

"Yeah," he muttered. "I'm asking you this."

She just shook her head. "God. I don't know...Right now, I think I'd like to be able to just give you a hug without that feeling too weird. Because...you look like you really need one. Do you think that would be possible?"

His eyes lit up softly with mild surprise at her answer. Then a tired half-grin slowly spread across his face.

"Sure," he said. "That doesn't sound too scary."

She gave a light laugh, finally seeming comfortable again as she came forward. He only then realized it, but he and Lilah had never just hugged each other before. It felt very new and different to stand with their arms relaxed around each other a long moment, but comfortable. He could feel that this small, simple thing changed everything; there were only two different ways they could go from here. He had made it clear by now that one way was completely closed to him for now, even if she may never understand exactly why. They both knew this was the most they would ever touch each other again.

* * *

After talking with Carlisle in his office a while, Edward found Bella sitting downstairs, approaching her from behind as she just sat frozen in thought with her arms crossed. Before saying anything he just touched her head, smoothing his fingers through her hair.

"Hm?" she said softly.

"I was about to mention the situation with Emily Uley to Carlisle," he said. "But I wanted to ask what you think first. I am not sure what would be best now."

She turned her head around to look at him. "You mean...tell him that she's pregnant?"

He nodded, his face very grave. "I thought...just in case something were to happen to us and Alice now..._just in case_...then maybe someone besides us should know about that, even if there may be more of a risk of Aro finding out that way."

Bella's eyes grew a little large with surprise. "You mean Alice has seen that?"

He nodded. "During all the time we have been involved in this, her sight has somehow become quite sensitive to everything happening with Emily. And her baby as well, in a sense...She sees a girl." He smirked unenthusiastically.

Bella's mouth dropped open a little. "Oh. Well...I guess that shouldn't be surprising. It's not like Emily's a werewolf. Her baby might be_ someday_, but..." Her shoulders shook with a dry laugh.

Edward went suddenly silent; when she looked back up at him standing above her, his eyes had gone wide. Assuming he was hearing something in someone's head that worried him, she immediately rose from her seat and touched his arm. "Edward?" she asked.

But when he spoke, he did not echo her scared tone at all. "Sweetheart!" he said, taking both of her hands with a bright look of excitement in his eyes that was strangely contagious; as Bella saw him like this she could not help but already feel a little bit of hope for the first time in so many days. "That's it! Of course!"

"What?" she asked, shaking her head in confusion.

"Oh, I am the biggest fool! I should have thought of this!"

To her surprise, he then dropped one of her hands and pulled her along with him to quickly run out of the house.

"I must not let the others hear," he said, closing the door behind them and then taking her a considerable distance far out into the yard before finally stopping and turning back to her to explain.

"Tell me," he said quickly. "The werewolves — they do _stop_ turning into wolves at a certain age, correct?"

"Yeah. Well, it's not so much at a certain age as whenever they can handle it, I think..."

"Right. This is what I should have realized before. Demetri, you see...The way he is aware of their minds is very different from the way he is aware of normal humans, just like vampires' minds feel very different to him than humans'. The presence of a wolf in a massive crowd of other people would be very prominent and immediately noticeable to him. It is very similar to how Alice's visions focus especially on other vampires and completely exclude their kind."

"Okay..." Bella had never known this about Demetri's tracking ability, but she was still failing to see why it was so important.

"So this is what we can do," he explained. "You will go tell the Volturi that you are accepting their offer but need some time to prepare yourself before leaving — a few months, I suppose — and while we have bought them that much time, the pack can split up into small groups and get far away from here to go into hiding. It would probably be best for them to find largely populated areas to go. And then they will have to do everything they can to stop phasing in that time so they will no longer be werewolves by the time you would finally have to go tell the Volturi you cannot accept their offer after all. I am almost absolutely sure that in that case Demetri won't be able to recognize them enough to find them again. Or at least it would be much too difficult to be worth it."

Bella was shaking her head doubtfully. "But it isn't that easy for them," she said. "They have to learn a level of self-control before they're ready to last that long without changing and go back to normal."

"But Jacob could have control over that as the Alpha, couldn't he? If he had to, he could order all of them never to phase again."

She looked taken aback. "Oh...I _guess_ that could work..."

Edward glanced behind her toward the house for a moment. "Everyone is wondering what we're talking about now," he said with a small grin.

"Why did we have to come out here?" she asked.

"Because if Jacob agrees to this when we tell him, which I expect we will get the chance to soon because he intended to come back to get his car later today, then I should probably not go with you to meet the Volturi. Carlisle and Esme can go with you, and we will not let them know what you're doing. Aro will probably want to touch someone to confirm that he can take your word for it when you say you intend to join them later and that we are not conspiring like this in some way. He will probably be able to tell that Esme and Carlisle are surprised to hear you agree to go with them, but at least they won't be in on the plan yet and he will have no way of finding out about it."

Bella stared off into the distance for a long moment, carefully considering every aspect of his plan. It involved a lot of risks. They could not be completely confident it would work. But it still seemed to give everyone in the pack much more of a chance than they had otherwise. In a way quite against her usual character that was very unfamiliar to her, she felt mostly optimistic.

Very slowly, a genuinely happy, radiant smile spread across her face. The relief pouring from her made her give a soft, uncontrollable laugh. It made him so happy to see it that Edward reflected the smile, taking her face in his hands and peering right into her eyes. They kissed each other excitedly, their mouths staying in smiles a little, with a kind of warmth Bella felt like she had forgotten.

* * *

The next morning, Edward found an excuse not to go along with Bella to meet the Volturi and she headed off with Carlisle and Esme along the same trail of their scents she had been indirectly following the day before.

When Jacob had showed up at the house to get the Rabbit still parked in their long driveway, it had been Bella's intention to keep plenty of distance between them now for both of their sakes after how potentially hurtful being in each other's presence had proven to be in the past few days.

But as soon as Edward had told her he was approaching and they went outside to wait to see him emerge out of the trees after changing back into his human form, all she had been able to see was that look of complete hopelessness that was always in his eyes now. And suddenly all she had cared about was wiping that look off of his face, sharing with him her feeling of lightness and cautious, not yet complete happiness, and she could not wait to tell him everything. As soon as he was close enough to see them waiting on the porch, she broke right away from Edward's side and ran right to him, calling his name. She excitedly touched his arms as she started talking to him without thinking about it.

Once Edward had caught up to them and they were both explaining the plan Edward had come up with, Jacob had looked overwhelmed as he tried to keep up with what they said and completely register the logic of it. But ultimately, he agreed that it was too promising an idea not to try it, and soon he was smiling a little along with Bella.

By the end of their brief meeting Bella had not even noticed how Edward and Jacob were now speaking to each other with absolutely no trace of obvious hostility between them for the time being. But as she ran with Esme and Carlisle, her thoughts were thickly occupied with both of them, and she did remember the conversation and realize this. She remembered how uncomplicated everything had felt as she stood with both of them, never standing much closer to either one of them than the other. She had felt so unconflicted then, in a way so natural and passive she hadn't even noticed at the time.

The scent of the large group of vampires Bella and the others were following grew very strong, and instead of the distant scurrying of animals she could usually hear all around while running through the forest, she started to hear nothing but a dead, completely vacated silence in the area they had entered. Soon they could look ahead of them and see many graceful figures moving around. By the time they reached them, the Volturi had become aware of them approaching and many of them had moved to stand grouped together and watch the encounter, while others stayed carelessly lounging up in trees or sitting on the ground against them, murmuring to each other as if carrying on conversations just as before.

Aro, of course, came ahead the furthest to meet them while Caius, Marcus, and a few others stayed grouped a few feet behind him listening.

"Welcome," he said, bowing his head, as if the three visitors were entering his home.

"Hello," Bella said when no one else replied, only then realizing that she was standing closest to him, flanked by Carlisle and Esme. They had approached with her in front like an ambassador without thinking about it.

"Hm," Aro said, curiously looking around at the three of them. "Edward felt no need to join you? I suppose then I cannot be optimistic and already know your answer."

"You have a lot of confidence in Marcus' talent," Bella observed.

He smiled at her, almost warmly. "I do. You must know that otherwise I never would have thought I should bother asking this of you. But it seems with _that_ certainty his talent could grant me I was mistaken. Are you really ready to condemn him and all the others to die?"

"Aro,_ must _you?" Carlisle asked beseechingly, his voice sounding a little hardened.

Aro looked past her at his old friend's face with a brief strain of regret showing in his eyes, the expression seeming to show that he couldn't help himself.

She didn't know why she was waiting so long to contradict the assumptions he was making and tell him she was willing to accept their offer, but something made her draw this moment out. Perhaps seeing Aro's disappointment was a little too enjoyable.

"Hm," Aro said, looking around at them all and coming closer. "Something seems strange here..."

Suddenly his eyes lowered right to Bella, then focusing on the necklace she still wore after running off with it on the day before, the large diamond shining over the smooth, bone-white skin at her throat.

"What a beautiful jewel," he said, his voice pleasant and almost casually conversational.

"Uh...Thank you," she said awkwardly, reaching up and touching it with surprise.

Aro smirked just a little. "I have never seen you with it before."

"...No," she replied, not knowing what else to say.

_Tell him you've changed your mind!_ she commanded herself. _That you just need some time first!_ But it did not yet feel like the right moment. She could not let it seem suspicious at all...

"I may not be able to read your mind," Aro said, "but I could swear I still detect some indecisiveness in you, Bella."

She just stared. Was he really able to suspect the reason she was still wearing something like her diamond at a time like this? She didn't get the chance to say anything in response before he looked past her at Carlisle again.

"Please allow me...I am only curious to see what made her come to this decision," he said, extending his hand toward him. "To acknowledge where our judgment failed."

Bella looked back at Carlisle, who met eyes with her a little unsurely a moment before reaching out and letting Aro touch him.

"_Ah_," Aro said almost right away. "I should have worried that Edward would pull something like that. There was certainly a reason we did not mean for the pack to...to know..."

As Bella watched him, Aro seemed to become distracted by his own thoughts he was processing from so quickly going through all of Carlisle's memories. Then he started to look very surprised by something.

"Well, that is unexpected..."

"What?" Esme asked, her voice full of tension.

Aro looked back up at Carlisle. "This pack of werewolves only exists because of_ your _particular coven's presence in Forks? This is true?"

He nodded, looking a little perplexed by the question. "I never knew it until recent years, but they do seem to be right that us living here is what causes their transformations."

"You mean you had no idea about that?" Bella said to Aro, her voice rising anxiously.

Aro shook his head, looking a little overwhelmed by the realization of what this meant. "Certainly not. It...is actually quite a shame..."

Carlisle came right toward him, standing only a foot in front of him, as Bella's head started spinning wildly with new possibilities. "_Why_ is it a shame you didn't know?" he asked.

"Well, we might have been able to come to some other kind of agreement..."

"So you only now understand that if we left, there would soon be no werewolves here anymore?" Bella asked, eyes wide with shock. But now that she really thought about it, perhaps they should have suspected that this never would have occurred to them...

Aro nodded, and instantly Carlisle said quickly, "Would you spare them if we swore to you that we'll leave?"

Many others behind Aro started muttering quick, surprised words to each other as he considered it a moment. He looked back at Marcus, who only shrugged, and Caius, who nodded to him stiffly.

"Very well," Aro said, looking back at the three of them. "However, you must give us your word that you will end this treaty of yours so that you can never live in this area ever again."

Carlisle extended his hand in a blur of fast movement. "It is a promise," he said.

Aro shook his hand, smirking tiredly as if the ridiculousness of this amused him a little. "We will send someone here to make sure you appear to be serious about keeping your word in a few months."

"We'll be gone without a trace by then," he assured.

And with that, Aro turned and motioned to the others, who in response moved to get ready to leave, and Esme immediately turned and grabbed Bella into a tight, exuberant hug. Bella was completely speechless and did not even breathe for a moment, staring wide-eyed past Esme's shoulder and feeling like everything was frozen still and finally at peace. She felt so light and free of burdens it was like she could float away if Esme let go over her.

It was over.

As soon as she felt like she could speak again, she got her phone out of her pocket and called Jacob.

After two rings he answered, "Hey."

"Jake!" she said. "You've got to call Sam. He can tell Emily to come home now. Everything's going to be fine."

"_Fine?_"

"We made a different deal with them. All we have to do is relinquish the treaty and leave Forks. They had no idea that would make the pack no longer a problem. Not after your generation, at least..."

"But how did they—? Oh, never mind, I don't even care."

"I'll explain later. Go tell everybody."

"Yeah. Bella...thanks so much. I know you don't want to hear that, but at least pass it on."

She was actually able to laugh. "Bye."

* * *

The world finally slowed down again, at the same time that it seemed to come back to life.

At the Cullens' house later that night, everyone was no longer talking in such scared, uneasy, or quiet voices anymore but enjoying themselves and joking normally again. Eventually they would have to face the prospect of leaving this home they had all become so accustomed to, probably more than any other place they had ever lived, but for now the small sacrifice in comparison to what they could have lost only gave them reason to feel like celebrating and finally relaxing again. Alice and Jasper were swing dancing barefoot while Edward beat fast, lively tunes out of the piano, while in another room Emmett had put on a loud, explosive action movie and was occasionally filling the house with his booming laughter because of comments Rosalie or Carlisle made while passively watching it with him.

Bella eventually left the rest of them, going upstairs into her and Edward's dark room by herself. Somehow she found herself standing with her arms crossed, biting her lip thoughtfully as she looked down at the small piles of folded clothes that were still gathered on the couch because she had been planning to pack them and take them with her to a new residence in Italy.

Everything was not quite right again yet. Somehow. This instinctive awareness kept digging into every relieved and happy thought she had as she looked forward to having an untroubled life again.

For an unknown reason, some words Jacob had told her lately resonated in her head then.

_"Live your own life, whatever that is now..."_

She moved without thinking further. She went to get a travel bag out of the closet, walked back to the couch, and packed all of the clothes that were still sitting there ready for her into it. She added other things: her mp3 player and headphones, a few books she had been meaning to start reading, her laptop computer, and a fat notebook that was almost completely unused and blank. She took off the necklace with Elizabeth Masen's diamond and put it back in the small top drawer of her dresser, closing it up safely.

The bedroom window was already open, letting in the light night breeze, and she left through it. Alice would see her doing nothing in the near future and wouldn't have to ask where she was going. But beyond that, after that, Bella herself wasn't sure what she would see.

* * *

Jacob was half-asleep in his bed when something made him open his eyes. He looked up and found Bella sitting neatly next to him, her posture perfectly erect and still as she peered down at him.

They just looked at each other at first, Jacob quite calmly taking in the unexpected and sudden sight of her, while the clock ticked loudly on his nightstand. Finally he whispered, "Well...that was easy."

The dry irony expressed in his face made her give a single, light laugh.

Jacob let out a long sigh. "I can't believe that if they'd only known that..."

Bella shook her head. "I don't think it would have made any difference," she said. "Carlisle told me himself he never would have guessed that this kind of arrangement would have been enough for them. That's why we never even considered this kind of solution. They needed to see that they stood to lose a lot to become willing to give up this easily."

"Right," he said; she was relieved to be able to tell that it made him feel a little better to hear this. "I guess you saw to that."

She smiled dryly. "Yeah." She peered closely at his face as if trying to take something in now that she finally had the chance to. "How are you doing?"

He took a while to answer, finally just giving a light shrug. "I'll be alright...I guess."

Her eyes drifted away from meeting his, and after another long silence he asked, "How soon do you have to go?"

"We'll probably leave after a month," she said.

"...And then I guess I won't be seeing much of you again."

Bella wondered if he could see how her breath caught for a second, how she momentarily felt like she could not move just trying to think about it. Then trying not to think about it. Not yet...

"We'll see," she just said. "For now...I'm going away for a while."

He looked surprised. "Just you? Where?"

"To Florida. To see my mom. I don't have any idea how she is now."

The confused look on his face almost made her laugh.

"She won't_ know _I'm seeing her," she explained.

He gave a light laugh. "Right."

He looked outside the window thoughtfully for a moment. "I guess a vacation will do you good now."

She laughed again. "I suppose you could describe it that way."

He looked back at her face and they met eyes again, examining each other. She knew he could see everything. He didn't have to ask why she might need a break from everyone else.

After looking at each other like this a while, she reached out and brushed his face and neck very lightly with the backs of her fingers, barely touching him. "Go to sleep," she said.

He kept looking up at her just a second before closing his eyes.

* * *

She did not feel like she had to say goodbye to him or explain. He would know anyway. He and Alice would both see her on a plane and be able to figure out what she was doing.

It would be the first time she had been separated from Edward in the whole time they had been married.

The world looks so different from up high, out of the window of an airplane. As Bella's flight started to take off, she felt more light than ever, weightless, almost like she did not even exist. Completely free of chains and weights and burdens, with just her raw and stripped self.

She was not even sure how she did it. She watched the world go away beneath her, leaving her alone. She turned away from the impasse, only to be met with another one. Then to look up and find an entirely different world, like a sky of a whole new color, and somehow rise away from everything else into it. Somehow she found the way out.


	15. XIV: silenzio

**Notes:** So I've barely cracked open _Breaking Dawn_ yet and decided I'm more interested in getting this finished first. I'd made it a goal to have this done by the time it came out since new canon can destroy everything and all. But at the time of my last update I'd been burning myself out consistently working on this fic for six months, and my heart just can't be in Twilight all the time. I'm sorry you guys have had to wait so long.  
This chapter and the one more remaining one have a lot of things that I really wish didn't need so many words to get through, and I'm kind of worried that everything left is going to seem like an overly long epilogue. But I hope the ending at least comes close to being worth the wait.

* * *

chapter** XIV** silenzio

* * *

Without love it was very quiet.

Somehow it felt like this was her last chance to save herself. Finding whatever there was left of herself after everything she had given away. She did not have Edward and she did not have Jacob. But she had Bella.

For four days she had been coming by her mother's house and watching her water her plants, make lemon cake and shrimp pasta, and dust off framed photos including many of Bella as a little girl or high school student and a wedding picture of her and Edward. Though the sight of Renée kept bringing a swelling, wistful sadness, it was also reassuring to be able to see her still going on with life. She could understand very much now what Jacob had meant about it being hard but also necessary and helpful to be able to keep seeing her.

She had a room on one of the highest floors of a hotel with a balcony that overlooked a view of the ocean miles away. It felt incredibly liberating to be able to do practically nothing, and she spent lots of time just standing in the safe privacy of the hotel room watching the distant waves move in the sunlight. She idly looked at herself in the mirror, doing her hair different ways she'd never done it before even though she wasn't going anywhere, finally leaving them in two long braids which somehow made her look like an unfamiliar person.

She had forgotten how beautiful it could be in sunny regions, how much she used to love places like this. The sky here looked like a completely different sky than the one she usually knew, dauntingly big and robin-egg blue. It wasn't long before she gave up being thoroughly cautious about going outside; she went out in the evening to buy a parasol and started lying under it out on her balcony during the day, wearing the outfit she'd brought that kept the most of her skin covered just in case anyone else outside was able to see her. Even though she could not feel the sun this way, it was an unusual luxury just to be able to relax outside soaking up this kind of warmth, reading a book or listening to music on her headphones with her eyes closed.

On her fifth evening there, she kneeled on the edge of the balcony and looked over at all of the people she could see moving around, as small as ants but with every detail down to hair color visible to her. On a sudden whim, she went back inside to get the notebook out of her carry-on bag which already had a few pages filled with doodles she'd made on the flight over. She started sketching various things she could see far away — a dog and its owner, a couple walking together, a mother and her baby.

Then as it started getting dimmer, the sky ignited into the most beautiful sunset she could remember seeing in years, burning with fierce colors that spread like bright wet stains of dye in cloth and danced below where they were reflecting on the sparkling waves in the ocean. She just stopped and stared at it until the sky completely darkened into all-too-familiar night, and then she immediately left to see if she could find a place to buy some certain things at this hour. She thought she knew now what she wanted to try to do with her time away.

* * *

Two days later Alice called, sounding confused almost to an extent of frustration.

"You're _painting?_" she demanded, as if even as she could see exactly what Bella was doing in her mind the concept just did not make any sense to her.

"Yes," Bella answered calmly, grinning with amusement as she paced leisurely around her room. "I really like it, actually. I don't feel as ridiculous trying to do it well as I used to. It was the same when Jasper asked me to draw those pictures of the Volturi."

"How many other talents and powers are you going to discover you have really late?" Alice teased. "I never knew you were artistic."

She shrugged even though Alice couldn't see her. "Neither did I. Though I did take some art classes in high school and had a couple teachers try to tell me I was. But I..."

"Couldn't believe it," Alice said with a slight tone of knowing annoyance.

She laughed.

"Well, couldn't you come home and continue your new hobby here?" Alice continued. "He's not insanely desperate to have you back with him yet, but Edward can't help but get a little nervous and disturbed when you're away for so long. You know...a little_ annoying_..."

Bella giggled a little again and said, "It's not like anything can happen to me."

"That's what I'm trying to tell him, but maybe it's just an old habit for him to worry about you. I don't know, I guess the irrational fear that bothers him now instead of that is that you're just going to leave him or something."

There was a dark silence. Bella looked down at the clean ivory carpet, biting her lip, and then Alice spoke again first.

"Sorry," she said. "I wasn't meaning to make you feel bad."

"It's okay...I don't know, Alice. I was planning to stay a few more days. I can't exactly paint a pretty-looking sunrise in Forks."

"Sure you can. Just make one up in your head."

Bella grinned, shaking her head. "I'll see you soon."

She heard Alice sigh. "Okay."

"Give everyone my love. Especially your annoying brother."

"Sure," she said with a laugh before hanging up.

Despite what she told Alice, she stopped painting things she saw after a while and instead did pictures from her imagination or memory. She painted a dark, foreboding forest like no place in the real world where she used to go all the time in dreams. Even though it was not a very happy place to think about, she wanted to try to imagine it again, and what she would be doing there if she dreamed about it again now.

She got bored with everything on her mp3 player and went out to a music store one night. Edward would buy stacks of fifteen CDs at a time, but she never knew where to start when looking for new music she might like. She could never even be sure if he already had something she was interested in. She did something she never would have been willing to do a few years ago and started conversations with friendly-looking strangers to find out what they thought was good. One man recommended a CD by a 60's British band which he said was "one of the most unfluential rock albums of all time," in a very important-sounding way. The cover art was a kaleidoscope of neon colors all swirling and bleeding into each other.

_I'm pretty sure Edward would hate this,_ she thought with an inner laugh as she looked at it. If she knew her husband at all, he was the biggest anti-hippie imaginable. With a small smile to herself she added it to her shopping basket.

After more than a week of being away, she realized with some alarm she could almost do this forever.

It wasn't as if Edward was the only one having difficulty and feeling strange while they were apart. It wasn't as if she wasn't a little lonely never talking to anyone she was used to seeing every day. Every step she took felt a little disorienting and unfamiliar, as if she wasn't quite used to independently supporting all of her own weight. As she listened to her headphones with her mind drifting, there were Edward songs and there were Jacob songs. She noticed things everywhere that reminded her of one of them or which she knew one of them would think was funny. Never both of them at the same time.

* * *

Bella's feeling of peace here didn't last past the eighth night.

There was an old red car. It was one of the only vehicles in a large parking lot by a strip mall very early in the morning when there was still an hour of darkness left. Here a vampire couldn't have the convenience of running from place to place concealed by forest, and even at this time of night Bella had to just walk at a moderate pace for most of the time as she made her way back to the hotel from the beach in case she was seen.

As she was crossing the lot, she realized first that there was someone in this car, breathing slow and relaxed breaths, and saw when she looked that there was a motionless man sitting in the front. She could smell all the alcohol on his breath and in his system from where was walking thirty feet away; he had probably stayed here to sleep it off instead of drive in his condition, if he hadn't simply passed out.

Then she just as quickly noticed something very wrong. It was not one pattern of breathing from far away she could hear, but two. One much quicker, much less easy and calm. And every few seconds this other breathing she could hear came in uncontrolled, high gasps that sounded distinctly female. Someone was crying.

As Bella turned and quickly approached the car, she became aware of a weak but unmistakable scent. Blood. Fairly fresh blood. She felt strangely detached from her body, as if she was walking through an unbelievable dream that just couldn't be happening, as she leaned her head over the trunk to listen closely.

Yes. Bella's eyes widened as she heard what she had dreaded she would — that sound, clearly coming from here inside it. Putting a hand to her face, she gasped and muttered into it, "Oh my God..."

All the car windows were down and in a couple seconds she was able to take the keys from the ignition without disturbing the passed-out driver at all. Even though she was certainly strong enough to break open the trunk without unlocking it, this wouldn't look as strange.

When she opened the trunk, she first had to stop and adjust to the stronger scent, impulsively holding her breath. Then she took in the sight of the girl: dirty blonde hair in a mess covering half of her face, bruised everywhere, hands tied behind her back, mouth gagged. No older than thirteen. Her eyes looked heartbreakingly dead inside watery pools of tears, until the second they saw her and they immediately widened.

"Shhh," Bella said softly before she made any sound, gently brushing her hair away from her face. "It's okay. You're going to be okay..."

As Bella untied her, the girl's eyed darted fearfully behind her and she looked like she could barely register what was happening or manage to speak.

"What's your name?" Bella whispered.

The girl swallowed deeply, taking a moment to find her voice before she faintly whispered, "Jane."

Bella froze for a split second at hearing the name. Then she just blinked and swiftly, very carefully lifted her out of the car. As Bella easily carried her away, Jane just closed her eyes and went limp except where her arms clung to her, barely staying conscious.

Bella reached the hotel in three minutes. When she came in and set the girl down in a chair, the woman at the front desk went white.

"Call the police," Bella told her. The woman looked like she wanted to ask ten different questions first, but after a brief hesitation she quickly picked up the phone.

Across from the desk, a man who was restocking a vending machine had frozen and was staring at them. Bella ran over to the opened machine and took a bottled water from it, screwing off the cap as she took it back to the chair.

"Here, honey, drink this," she said, handing it to the girl. "Do you know how long you were in there?"

She weakly took a drink, her hands trembling around the bottle. "I don't know...They knocked me out...I was..."

"_They?_ There were others besides the one guy?"

She took a shaky breath. "One...There were two of them..."

Bella ran back out of the hotel before anyone had the chance to shout any questions after her.

She found the man still out cold in the car. She opened the door and yanked him out by the arm so fast he woke with a startled yelp, breaking a knee right away when he hit the concrete. This wasn't happening.

"_Jesus!_" he roared, not getting a chance to turn his head and look at her before she grabbed it and smashed his nose into the ground.

Right before speaking she reached into his head, manipulating his thoughts so that to him her voice would sound masculine and huge, terrifying. She wasn't Bella. This wasn't happening.

"The other one who was with you when you took her!" she shouted. "Who is he? Where is he?"

He squirmed and struggled on the ground, trying in vain to turn his head as she kept holding it down. "Who the—?!"

She only had to hit him one more time before he spit it out almost too quickly for her to understand — someone named Shaw who lived in an apartment just three blocks away. Then she had him knocked out and sitting back in the car as he had been before, without ever having gotten a look at her, just in time for her to make it back to the hotel right before the police arrived.

* * *

The girl was quickly identified as Jane Healey, who had been missing for over 24 hours. Bella found herself riding in the ambulance with her to the hospital. She had been locked up in the trunk for so long that she was severely dehydrated.

As Bella waited in the hospital, a very confused police officer immediately started asking her about every detail and trying to make sense of her partially fabricated story. He clearly thought she was crazy for taking the kidnapper's keys right from the car while he was asleep in it after she heard noises from his trunk.

She shrugged, trying to convincingly look like she was only now realizing how stupid it might have been. "I was afraid he might wake up and leave before I could get to a phone...I'm sorry, could you excuse me a minute?"

She dashed off toward the bathroom, waiting until the officer had looked away and then running right past it to find a way out of the building. The streets were still quiet, the light outside still very dim, and it was still easy enough for her to move fast and make sure she wasn't seen.

The apartment door at the address the man had told her wasn't even locked when she found it and silently slipped inside. A television was on, a shower running in the next room. Bella thought of herself at age thirteen and this girl's wrists bleeding from the ropes and had to tell herself she wasn't here to do anything to him. She was still walking outside of herself, feeling detached from reality.

She found a wallet thrown on the couch, opened it up and looked at the driver's license inside. Joseph H. Shaw. Too easy. She slipped it in her pocket and swiftly crept back out the door.

When she came back to the hospital, there was a couple there talking to the doctor and wiping at their wet eyes. The doctor noticed her approaching and said, "There, that's her." All at once the woman came forward and grasped her in a tight hug and Bella realized these had to be the girl's parents.

"You are an angel," she said as Bella's eyes went wide. "What you did...I can't believe _anyone_ would do that..."

The close smell of blood distracted her for a second before Bella relaxed enough to tentatively return the hug. "I'm so sorry," she said.

The woman broke away from her and said, "I'm Kathy. This is Grant."

"Bella," she replied as the father shook her hand, holding it tight in both of his for a second.

"Please, if there's _anything_ we can do to thank you..."

She shook her head. "Oh no. No. I just...Sorry, I think they still have some questions to ask me..."

She turned away and went to the officer who was still waiting for her, trying to look a little nervous now. "Sir...Listen." She took the wallet out of her pocket and handed it to him. "The girl told me there was another guy besides the one you already took in. This was sitting on the passenger seat and it doesn't seem to be his."

He opened up the wallet and looked at the ID, immediately giving her a puzzled and shocked look.

"I...was stealing it," she said quietly, putting on a guilty look. "That's how I got close enough to hear her kicking around in there. I'm sorry I didn't say anything sooner—"

"Right," he said quickly, eyes still wide. "Thanks. I don't think we need anything else now, you can leave...Jesus...Hey, Caplan!" he called urgently to another cop as he quickly left her side.

She sighed and sank into a chair as she was finally left alone.

* * *

People kept talking restlessly around her, a white buzz of noise. The thick, dark clouds in her head cleared, exposing the nightmare that had just happened as exactly what it was as the time crawled to morning. She waited to find out that Jane was going to be okay. She stayed there in the chair feeling frozen with shock, fiddling with her wedding ring or sometimes her bracelet, feeling like she couldn't move from this spot. She didn't know why.

If Edward were there, she knew he would have shed nothing but bright light on the whole thing. _What's wrong? Are you so shocked to discover that you're still capable of being good that all of your faith in yourself suddenly depends on this child being all right? If it were me, you know, I probably would have just killed both of them, but you..._

Jacob would have acted like he was taking everything lightly, making it seem like it wasn't that big a deal after all. _So saving my ass with your special vampire powers gave you a taste for heroism, did it? You should get yourself a cape...Come on, Bells, you know there was no other way to handle it. You had to do it. But it's over now._

Just thinking about them like this and imagining their words slowly calmed her. But at the same time, it made her miss them so terribly it was as if she had not seen either of them in years.

Right before Bella needed to leave because the sun was coming up, Jane was awake and asked to see her to say goodbye. They didn't talk about what had happened. Her father had brought her favorite teddy bear to her, and Bella asked about the tiny gold necklace with a bluebird charm around its neck.

"I've had it since I was really little," she explained, her voice hollow and tired. "The chain doesn't fit me anymore, so now my bear wears it."

Before Bella was about to leave, Jane insisted she keep the necklace as a gift. Bella was disarmed by the almost careless way she offered it to her, seeing that it must have meant a lot to her before and over a couple days had become nothing. How could she take it?

But it seemed to mean a lot to her that she be able to give Bella something, at least, so she smiled and thanked her.

That evening as her plane took off into the sky, she did not stare out the window but just looked forward. She was definitely quite ready to go home.

* * *

Edward was already waiting outside, looking anxious, when she pulled up the driveway of the immense white house she was so happy to see again. She knew he had to have seen everything that happened because of Alice, and she might never have been so relieved to not have to explain something in her life. She got out of the car and went to meet him right away, leaving the car door open behind her, and they embraced warmly without having to say anything.

He could tell how upsetting her experience had been just because of the way she buried herself in him, so desperate to feel something secure again. "Oh, Bella," he said into her hair, squeezing her tighter.

"I missed you," she said.

Emmett had already come outside and was opening up Bella's trunk. "Alice said you had a lot to unload," he said.

Bella turned around to see him. "Well, sort of...I brought back some of the things I painted."

"_Damn_," he said, uncovering one of the canvases to see a detailed forest landscape. "Yeah, you sure did."

Edward and Bella laughed softly.

"He'll get it," Edward said to her. "Come on."

They went inside and sat down together, joining all the others who were home. Bella knew that the kind of risk she had taken by doing what she did for the young girl wasn't something any of them could afford to turn into a habit, and she had been a little worried about what some of them would think of it. But Esme and Carlisle both seemed inflated with pride for her. Emmett was even very amused by the idea of the first man they had arrested having a crazy story about how he got beat up that wouldn't make any sense to anyone.

A while later, Bella and Edward went upstairs together and Edward spent a long time looking at all of the paintings she had brought into their room. Most of them depicted real places but they all looked at least a little dreamlike and surreal, the colors she'd used evoking intense moods, and they were all easily identifiable as coming from the same unique point of view. He sat back on the couch next to her, continuing to look at them lined up against the shelves from afar.

"Did you ever consider doing anything in the arts at all?" he asked, crossing his arms thoughtfully.

"No," Bella answered. "Not really."

He smiled. "It doesn't particularly surprise me that you have had this kind of hidden talent all along. You have always been good at expressing yourself. You write beautiful letters."

Bella shook with a short laugh. "When have I ever written you letters?"

"In school," he said, looking like he thought this should be obvious, "when we gave each other notes in between classes."

She raised an eyebrow. "If you say so."

"There you go," he said teasingly, "doubting yourself as usual. Which is another reason I wouldn't be surprised for you to discover just about anything you're capable of."

"Give me some credit," she said with a smile. "I've gotten better."

He smiled back. "Yes, you have. In fact...perhaps a certain kind of understanding of yourself is all you've been missing to be a very subtly manipulative force. Maybe you're not any good at lying on purpose, but the way you act and talk has never given a very good impression of what you are really like. You're the kind of person who nobody would ever guess is a danger, who simply stays quiet while nobody realizes you're paying close attention and observing everything they do to use it against them. The way you can control people now is a quite passive-aggressive kind of offense because it only works on someone when they are not even aware of your influence. And it works because people tend to never be able to suspect what you are really thinking — I should know."

She laughed. "I guess I see the logic there."

He nodded. "Your real self is always so locked away...sometimes even to you," he said, and then looked back at one of her paintings. "But when and only when you do wish for your thoughts to be known, you are quite gifted at saying or showing what is in your mind, in one way or another."

Bella kept looking to the side at him, her eyes widening just a little with a complete realization. Of course. It was like she had understood this, deep inside, for a long time. Ever since Jacob had asked about it and planted the question in her head...

He found her intense gaze on him and looked back at her. "What?" he asked.

She reached forward and took his face in her hands. "I'm ready to show you something now," she said quietly, looking at him closely with concentration. His expression was questioning, but he waited and didn't say anything.

She didn't know exactly how she knew she could do it. She just suddenly had complete confidence about it. She closed her eyes and thought of all she had seen the whole time they were away. She concentrated on images of the beach and the city, the things in her mother's house, and all the people she had met. She remembered the mixture of liberation and pain it gave her to be there away from him. All of this she remembered and let him remember it, too, gently pressing herself into his mind to make it feel as if he had been there in her shoes himself.

And she thought of saving the young girl. Not simply the memories, the images of what had occurred that he had already seen, but everything she had felt afterwards and what it had meant to her. Sitting in that hospital, she had been unable to stop thinking about how easily she'd hurt that human and how easy it would have been to do even worse to him. Because whether or not they deserved it was not the point. This was what she had hated so much about using her powers against others in the first place. This was what had brought Edward back to his family again many years ago after he'd run away. This was why he and Jacob had begged her not to join the Volturi even though they knew she would always be good. The things she did to other people because she was powerful enough to and could hate them enough to, over time, could hurt her just as much as it hurt the ones who had it coming to them.

Bella had accepted this kind of danger when she became more than just human, and she had now returned to her family finally understanding that this was what their kind had to be careful about all the time. She would always have to be afraid of what she might turn into and what she was capable of, even if she had still never crossed the line. She had learned in the last few weeks that even her choices had so much more power than she'd ever realized — that she did always have choices, possibly with shattering consequences. But all of this meant that she also had the power to do good.

As she illustrated all of these realizations in Edward's head, he raised his hands to her wrists and grasped them. His eyes were open but unfocused, looking just like Alice's did when she was seeing something in the future. Then when Bella was finished and the flow of images and thoughts stopped, he blinked and looked right into her face. They kept looking at each other in realization for what seemed like a long time.

So much happened just in that moment. The significance this had to them changed everything, and they knew it.

Edward put his hand to her face, looking like he would be crying if he could. "Finally I can see what is in your head," he sighed heavily. His words ended with her mouth covering his.

And maybe it all made sense. Aro saying it almost seemed like she was meant to become one of them. Her being his singer and the only exception to his talent, practically drawn to him through bad luck because of how she had always seemed to attract danger, and even having some kind of predisposition that made it easier for her to stay in control when she became a vampire.

It was as if they had been made to compliment one another, the weakness in his talent being the strength of hers. In that moment, it felt like they had always been meant for each other.

* * *

For the first two days she was back, Bella spent time only with the Cullens. Edward never asked what she knew he had to be wondering.

She was very happy again, but things were not complete. It was as if she still hadn't completely come home yet.

She tried not to go to Jacob. She knew it could be time to get used to the idea of letting go again, and for all she knew he would appreciate a more clean break. But after spending so much time distractedly wondering about him, she knew it was futile. So much had changed between her and Jacob since they'd started seeing each other again, and she still didn't know where exactly it was going. She just wanted to see her friend. At least then she would know.

It warmed her heart in a certain indescribable way only this place else ever would when she came to his house and found him in the garage. Even if many things were out of order and still in the dark, as long as Jacob could be found tinkering around and fixing things in his garage it meant the world was functioning as it's supposed to.

Bella had been absolutely sure that Jacob would be understanding as long as she still hadn't come to see him again after returning to Forks. What she certainly hadn't expected was the look of unreserved joy and excitement that slowly lit up his face after he looked up and saw her approaching outside. Right away she had a strong impression that he himself was a little surprised by how happy he was to see her, after everything.

Nothing mattered. He walked out of the garage and right over to her and hugged her enthusiastically, picking her up off the ground and then swinging her around once while she tried to object but was smiling anyway.

"Jacob, you can't — Hold on!" she said, almost overwhelmed as the scent of his blood hit her like a hard wall all over again.

"Oh," he said, looking up at her guiltily as he remembered. "Sorry."

But she had comfortably put her arms around his shoulders now and he could see she was in control, so he kept holding her like this.

"See, you're okay," he said encouragingly.

Hearing his voice was like ground holding her feet. She looked down at him, seeing the way his features all seemed to be weighed down a little less, even though his smile still wasn't quite right. "You seem better," she said.

"Yeah?" he said, setting her back down on the ground so that he towered over her again. "You look alright, too. Some sunshine must have done you good."

She rolled her eyes at the obvious irony of his statement. "Well...maybe. My quiet little vacation ended up being a little more intense than I'd hoped."

He raised his brow curiously. "Really? What happened?"

She looked at him hesitantly for a moment. Finally she smiled and shook her head. "It doesn't really matter. How is everything here?"

They went inside as he told her how things had been going for the pack. Jared and Kim were getting married in three months and were going to have to choose a different best man because it was supposed to be Paul. Emily and Sam were going to name their baby Seth if it was a boy (Bella remembered what Alice had seen but kept it to herself when she heard this). Jacob was optimistic that he and Leah would be able to get along again someday as long as they could completely avoid bringing up the way they each felt about the Cullens.

"Oh wait, except we didn't exactly get along great before," he said dryly.

Bella smirked, looking over at him as they were sitting on his bed. "At least I haven't destroyed your friendship."

"No, just turned me into a lousy leech lover just by comparison to her and the others. They can't be thinking I've gone soft when I'm the one who leads the pack, dammit."

"Hey, how do you think_ I _feel being the family freak who thinks her werewolf friend smells delectable?" she said.

"Pretty appetized right now, I'm sure," he said, holding his wrist right out in front of her nose.

She hit his hand away from her face. "You're _cruel!"_

He chuckled, leaning back to lie across the bed. She joined him, lying back so they were both staring up at the ceiling.

"Jacob...you were right about me," she said. "About how much I can do, I mean. During the battle, I didn't really make you change back so I could save you. I just said something in your head without realizing it."

He rolled his head to the side to look at her and smirked. "Told you. How did you figure that out?"

She shrugged. "I don't know, it just came pretty easily. I have a feeling once I've gotten more used to doing it, it'll be easier than just opening my mouth to tell somebody something."

"Heh. I bet Eddie's thrilled that he finally has some way to sort of know what you're thinking."

She smiled. "Yeah. He really is."

Jacob's face turned a little more gentle, and then he looked just faintly pained for a split second. "Well, that's good," he said softly.

She turned onto her side to face him. "Want to know something kind of funny?"

"What's that?" he asked.

His expression changed as she started concentrating, his eyes looking past her as the images started going into his head. She thought of when she had found him there and discovered where he was bitten, and then plunged into the very different kind of memory it had reminded her of. The first time she had almost kissed him, in her truck after he had taken her home. She remembered it very clearly; she had felt a little shaken after everything that had happened that day, her head still so full of the crushing waves that when she blinked the bruise-blue water in the storm was all she saw behind her eyelids. But when Jacob hugged her, the nervous feeling she had in her stomach was more like floating than drowning, and her heart beat like a bird pecking wildly against its cage. It had been more than just nervousness...

Then she let him see what she had been thinking about doing in that moment right before he turned away from her. Because it was kind of funny, really, where exactly she was going to kiss him and where she'd had to draw his blood out of the bite. And not funny at all.

And maybe it all made sense. Maybe things did not have to work out perfectly in the end, falling right into place as if the pull of destiny was arranging everything just so, for them to still have meaning. He'd been there in her life in the form of that truck she'd loved before she knew it. He was a mechanic when she'd needed a mechanic. And even now after she'd been turned, things kept compelling them to meet again. In a way Bella couldn't even articulate to herself, she could see now because of these little connections that perhaps their suffering had never been a mistake. Right then, it felt like she was unmistakeably meant to be here with him.

Jacob was silent for a while after seeing all of the memory, looking a little awed as he kept staring past her. Then he looked into her face wistfully.

"Bella Swan," he sighed. It was all he said.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

"No, I'm glad you showed me. That's...Wow. Your _head_..."

She laughed softly at his inability to respond, and then he cracked a smile. They both rolled back onto their backs and stared up in silence again for a while.

"Do you have to work today?" she asked, wondering if she should leave soon. It felt like a strangely normal question to ask.

Jacob shook his head and then seemed to have a sudden thought. "Do you want to do something...you know...kind of fun?"

"Fun?" she echoed.

"Yeah," he said in an unsure tone. "I haven't been out of the house to do much of anything lately. I don't know, what do vampires do when they've had a bad past few weeks and need to unwind?"

She shrugged. "I guess hunting is always pretty relaxing."

He looked at her with a raised eyebrow, obviously not prepared for that. "Hunting?"

"Sure. Hunting is fun. Especially if you can take a lot of time to try to find your favorite kind of prey."

He looked like he was trying to understand the concept for a while before deciding it made enough sense, but his face still expressed some kind of culture shock. "And what's your favorite? What animal tastes the best to you? Besides me..."

She laughed lightly and nudged him with her elbow. "I like deer and elk the best," she answered naturally.

"Deer and elk." His mouth tightened like he was trying not to laugh, perhaps as he tried to imagine her attacking a deer.

Something occurred to Bella and she said, "Hey...Do you still have our bikes?"

Slowly, and with just a little embarrassment, he smiled. "Yeah. They're still here. I've kept them in good shape, too."

"Do you want to go for a ride?" she asked. "I promise I won't hurt myself this time."

He laughed. "I think I can believe you this time."

At first they started taking both of the motorcycles out of the garage, but Bella thought of how she would be able to safely go much faster than him and suggested an idea. He ended up riding in the seat behind her as she drove one, holding on tight to her waist as they whirled around the curves of the road effortlessly with the trees just a blur going past them.

They never talked about what they were going to do from now on. They had known how everything was going to be from the moment she had shown up outside his garage and all the sudden they both couldn't believe they'd gone four years without each other. Treaty or no treaty, there was one vampire who would always be welcome here as long as he was the protector in charge.

Sometimes, Bella thought, things are more worthwhile all because they surely can't last.


	16. XV: children of the night

**Notes:** It's DONE. I know, I can't believe it either. A huge thanks to everyone who's followed this fic and left me reviews. If you want to download the soundtrack playlist and check out other "special features" for this fic, there's a link in my profile to an extras post for it in my LiveJournal.

* * *

chapter **XV** children of the night

* * *

A month later, all the preparations had been made for the Cullens to move away from Forks. They had already bought a new house in Alaska under a new name most of them would be taking, and Carlisle had found a job at a new hospital there.

The day they were going to leave, Bella and Edward spent a few hours together in the meadow. The sun was not out. Not long before now, Bella might have wished it was bright outside so it could feel more like that first day they ever came here together, when she stared at the incredible thing that was his glimmering body in awe and felt like she was sitting beside someone godlike and out of her reach. But she did not long for their past the way she used to, for the newness and innocence of that time before his appearance in sunlight had become second nature to her and something she now could confidently know as an unremovable part of her life rather than marvel at.

As dusk approached, they both knew it was time to go back, but they were hesitant to move. Finally she was the first to rise from the ground. He followed her at a leisurely pace, looking back behind him all the while. She stopped and looked back at him when they reached the edge of the meadow, gazing back at it with him after seeing the wistful look in his eyes. She knew her own face probably held the same look.

"It's hard to believe we will not come here together ever again," he said quietly, obviously deep in his thoughts and memories. "It is quite sad. Everything started here in this town. And this is our place..."

She smiled a little as she looked to the side at him, and then took his hand encouragingly. "We have a lot of other places to go together now," she said softly.

He gazed at her face a while, his own gentle smile slowly spreading across his face. With some acceptance in his expression, he turned to run away with her, still holding onto her hand. And with that they left behind their untainted past, the simple fairy tale, a still life so stable and frozen in its blissful happy ending. Instead they were heading into a life with no ending at all, complete uncertainty, constant forward motion and change.

* * *

Jacob came to the house along with some of the other werewolves just as it had gotten dark. Everyone met in the front yard, the two groups facing each other. Jacob addressed Carlisle, telling him in as polite a way he could what it meant that they would no longer have any boundaries set for his family not to cross. In short , he knew it wouldn't be against the agreement they'd made with the Volturi for one of them to simply pass through the area again, but he still wasn't responsible for anything that might happen to one of them here.

At some of his words, Bella noticed Quil glance at her with a bit of a smirk. She could tell it was no secret that she was an exception to this warning; she knew for a fact now that ever since a while after the word had gotten out about her part in bringing down the Volturi on them, Jacob had forbidden everyone in the pack to ever hurt her "unless it's necessary to protect someone else." She had wondered but not wanted to ask if he had specifically excluded himself from that loophole in his order and made it still forbidden if the "someone else" was him.

Bella realized how formal and unnecessary this all seemed as Carlisle and Jacob then shook hands to signify their agreement. An agreement to end an agreement. There was something almost humorous about it; the Volturi requiring them to at least go through the motions of not being allies because they couldn't permit them to co-exist. Even though they all knew, if begrudgingly, that there would probably never be any reason to attack each other again.

Quil and Embry both stayed behind with Jacob a moment as the others were leaving. Looking at Bella, Embry shrugged as if thinking to himself, _Screw it_, and then leaned over to give her a quick hug and said, "See you, vampire girl." Quil just reached for her hand and squeezed it briefly, smiling at her and saying noting.

Then Jacob and Edward were facing each other, and after a few seconds of them standing still like this it seemed the silence should have gotten awkward. And it was, a little, but Bella had no doubt that this silence was being filled with some kind of thoughts of Jacob's that he would not say out loud as his last ever words to Edward.

Then Jacob finally spoke again, his tone stiff and unsure. "Right...well...Stay in good health, Edward."

Bella rolled her eyes at his obvious sarcasm; Edward smirked a little, and actually reached out to quickly shake his hand, saying, "Don't worry. This time I think we can be quite confident you'll never have to see me again."

Jacob laughed light-heartedly, and even Bella was able to smile. Despite their words, there was no real animosity in either of their voices.

Before she and Jacob turned to each other, she picked up a canvas wrapped in paper that had been sitting on the porch. She felt strangely shy explaining it to him.

"This is...um...something I decided I'd like you to keep," she said. "I painted it while I was away."

His brow lifted. "You sure?"

She shrugged. "I did a lot of them. It's one less thing to have to pack."

Of course, he could tell this wasn't the real reason she was giving him this one. He was also able to tell somehow that he probably shouldn't take off the paper and see what it was until later when he was away from everyone else.

"I can't exactly carry it back home with me as a wolf," he realized aloud. "You want to give me a ride?"

"Oh...I don't know," she said. "On the roads I could be seen."

"That's right," he said. Ever since he'd seen her again, it had been easy to forget sometimes that she was supposed dead by most of the people she used to know.

Then Bella touched his arm and said, "Wait. I can ask Carlisle to lend me his car. It's safe..."

They did not talk very much as Bella quickly drove the sleek black car around the long winds of the road. They felt no need to say anything. They both knew how this felt for them.

"Are you sad to leave Forks?" Jacob asked her at one point, his tone very casual. He clearly meant the place itself and not the people.

She nodded. "Yeah. I think this town is always going to feel more like home than anywhere else, no matter how long I live away from it. But this had to happen eventually. And it'll be nice living somewhere where I don't have to stay hidden at home all the time. After I got a taste of that kind of freedom again in Florida, it's been bothering me more than usual."

They were silent for a while, listening to the classical music Carlisle's radio was playing softly. Then, just as they got close to the reservation, Bella said, "Jake..."

When she kept hesitating, he turned his head toward her. "What?"

"What were you saying to Edward in your head?" she asked, unable to help her curiosity.

He smiled, leaning back in his seat and putting his hands behind his head. "That he's a filthy bloodsucker and an asshole," he answered.

Bella smiled knowingly. "Fine," she said, echoing his joking tone. "If you don't want to tell me, you don't have to."

He was still and quiet for a long moment, and then finally said with some reluctance, "I...apologized for the way I acted when I was trying everything to convince you not to go to Volterra."

Bella did not look at him, but he could see the look of surprise that took over her face.

"Well...I guess I didn't _apologize _so much as just explain that it wasn't done out of disrespect for him, because I wasn't even thinking," he explained further. "When I was actually trying to steal you away from him—you know, a long time ago—I _didn't_ respect what you and him had or take it seriously that you were together because of what he is. To me, it was like he didn't count. But I guess I don't really see him that way anymore. Everyone in your family you're with now...They're good people. It's kind of too bad you're all leeches."

As they were nearing his house, she looked to the side at him and smiled warmly. "If you could go back, would you actually do anything differently, though?"

Shrugging, he admitted, "I guess not. I'd just feel a lot more crumby about it on account of him."

She laughed softly.

"And also...I just told him I'm grateful and relieved that he's obviously been able to make you happy," he continued, "even with everything you've lost."

They were now parked outside his house, and she turned to look at him incredulously.

"But of course," he added quietly, "if he's not enough to get you through life sometimes, your best friend is always still here."

She couldn't find any more words. Her face started to crumple a little with sadness, and he immediately leaned toward her and kissed her forehead, his eyes closing with a similar expression of faint pain.

"Just drive away now," he said softly, then turning away and getting out of the car carrying the covered painting.

He stood and watched her driving off even though he could see nothing of her through the dark, shining windows and only watch his own reflection in them getting smaller and smaller.

When he got inside, he went right to his room and set the canvas down on his bed, slowly tearing off the paper with a lethargic lack of energy. The colors of the Olympic penisula scenery were instantly recognizable just through the first narrow tears, even though they were brighter and more defined than one was usually used to seeing them, part of a rare scene with a bright sunset. Or sunrise. Somehow, as he uncovered the whole painting, he got the strong impression that it was supposed to show the breaking of day, not a sunset.

It was First Beach. Their place. But this sentimental meaning of it alone was not what made him stare at it in slight disbelief with the breath knocked out of him for a second. That wasn't the point. What made his heart feel so overwhelmingly full as he looked at it was that he knew Bella had not painted this anywhere near La Push. But to someone who was familiar with the beach and didn't know any better, it would unquestionably look like something that had to have been painted while looking at it or a picture of it as a reference. Every detail, from the rocks that came out of the water in the distance to the large piece of driftwood pictured right in the bottom right corner that he and Bella had always sat on together like a bench, was painted so accurately he could tell a photograph of the scene from the same angle would hardly be distinguishable. No human would have the precise enough memory to be able to do this.

It wasn't signed on the bottom. In case he kept it hanging somewhere that visitors to his house could see it, it wouldn't be a good idea for Charlie to see a new painting with his deceased daughter's signature in one corner. Jacob turned it over, not exactly expecting to find anything. But there on the inside of the wooden frame he found the tiny message in impossibly neat writing: "Do you remember? Love always, Bella."

And the intended meaning of the gift was clear. No matter how far away from this place she was, it and the crystal clear memories associated with it were always going to be with her. And it was the same for her memories of him. Nothing would ever fade for her and she would always miss him when she couldn't see him, always love him every bit as much as she still did now.

She would always want. She would always have.

* * *

As the Cullens all stood together outside of their now emptied house under the dark blue sky of a night that had almost completely fallen, Jasper took out his lighter, volunteering to do the job. He looked around at all the others' faces, seeing if they were ready. They all waited in a preparing silence, and Carlisle nodded to him.

He sprung into action, disappearing into a window of the house. The others could hear him moving quickly from place to place inside, and then after a while they started seeing dark smoke escaping from windows, and then saw some of the flames he'd started beginning to light up the dark cavities of every room where they had spent so many days and long nights.

They had decided this was necessary. Or even if not completely necessary, reasonable. The Volturi would be returning here soon wanting to see that the Cullens were honoring their agreement. The more convincing they could make it appear that they were serious about never moving back to Forks again, the less they needed to worry about them feeling the need to keep checking in on the area for very long. And it meant a lot to Bella, and even a little to some of the rest of them, for this place to finally be as safe from vampires as possible.

Besides that, though none of them had said as much, it was understood that most of them did not like the idea of someone else occupying this house for ages after they were gone. It was one of their only homes they had ever had designed and built specifically for them and their needs, and they just couldn't imagine it getting turned mundane being lived in by humans for the first time.

Jasper came back to stand with the others, and Alice came to his side and wrapped both her arms around his waist as she stood by him and watched. Edward had taken Bella's hand, and he also went to Esme's side to put his arm around her shoulders, and then she and her son exchanged small, bittersweet smiles. As they watched the fire starting to consume the entire house, their golden-amber eyes all reflected the light of the flames and looked like softly burning embers.

Bella squeezed Edward's hand in hers, leaning her head against his shoulder. She knew she would probably be crying if she could. Even if their memories of living here would always stand out to them in many ways, for the rest of her family this home was still just one of many, while it meant worlds to her for so many reasons. But this was a good thing. She, more than any of the rest of them, needed to let go.

* * *

Jared married Kim a month later. Jacob and four of his friends ended up gathered at a table at the wedding reception, watching as they had their first dance.

"Aren't they just sickeningly cute?" Brady said as he joined their table, sitting next to Leah and immediately taking the cigarette she was smoking from her fingers to steal a drag.

Embry laughed. "Another wedding for one of us," he mused. "Doesn't it make you feel kind of old?"

"Not me," Collin said with a laugh. "Heck, we've all got plenty of time before we'll even start looking any different."

"Jake, are you planning on still being single once Quil and Claire get married?" Embry asked.

"That's funny," he said sarcastically, but with a small smirk.

A curious look crossed Brady's face. "Are you still fooling around with that cute waitress? Layla, or something?"

"Lilah," Quil corrected.

Jacob shook his head and answered, "No, it's not like that anymore."

"Could I get her number?" Collin asked with a grin.

"Shut the fuck up."

Many of them broke into short laughter.

Brady went on, "Huh. I thought that might...you know...turn into something. You actually seemed kind of close."

Jacob shrugged. "Sure. But not close enough."

"For what?"

"What else? For it to be worth the risk."

"Would it kill you to try to be happy with somebody?" Embry asked.

"No, but it wouldn't be very fair if it didn't work."

"That's no way to think about it."

"Easy for you to say. You've already imprinted on somebody."

Quil smirked and said, "I thought you were so certain that's never going to happen to you."

"That won't be much of an excuse for never telling somebody it _could_ happen if it does once I've already married her and given her three kids or something."

Collin shook his head slowly, looking a little depressed by the truth of it. "Ugh. It's tough luck, isn't it?"

Embry sighed. "It's not like you can ever make sure you'll never hurt anybody anyway," he said. "That's just life, isn't it?"

"That's not the point," Jacob said. "Any girl I'm going to get involved with just has a right to know what kind of risks she's taking, at least if it starts to get serious. And if I'm going to tell her anything I better be pretty damn sure I'm ready for that and she's the kind of person who could handle it. It's not as simple as just...meeting somebody nice."

Quil shook his head, letting out a long sigh. "Dang...When did we get so grown-up and responsible?"

The others laughed again. Even Leah, who had been sitting in a bored silence most of the time, cracked a grin.

Jacob thought back on what had brought them to this conversation, and said, "The funny thing is...Lilah and I have kind of gotten even closer ever since we decided to just be friends, and now everybody else at work seems to be getting the idea that we've started going out."

Quil cracked up laughing.

"That must be awkward," Collin said.

He shrugged. "She thinks it's hilarious."

"I guess she was never dumb enough to fall in love with you, then," Quil said.

Jacob laughed. "Thanks. Either that or she's as good an actor as I am."

Emily came over to their table after she'd been talking to Sue at the one next to theirs. Embry was the first to look up and see her. "Hey, Em!" he said as she waved in greeting.

She gave off a radiantly cheerful appearance in a bright mint green dress, one of her hands rested on her now quite large belly as she walked over as if lingering there unconsciously. At her appearance, Leah considerately put out her cigarette by smashing the end into her hand. Jacob stopped himself from laughing as he noticed her breathing hard through her clenched teeth for a moment, knowing what she must be doing even as the table blocked his view, and then she relaxed a little and sat shaking her hand with the now subsiding pain as the burn was already healing. Always with her tireless show of toughness.

"Don't you look pretty as a picture," Embry said to Emily.

"Thanks," she said, smiling in a way that somehow lit up her entire face even though only the beautiful half of it could smile. "I feel like a whale."

"Bet you can still move fine on the dance floor," Jacob said, offering his hand to her.

"Are you trying to get away from us?" Collin teased him.

"Yes," Jacob answered, and his completely serious tone made them all start laughing again. "No more kids' table crap for me."

He got up and started dancing with Emily to a slow song, talking with her casually about how the ceremony had gone for a minute as they swayed in slow circles. Then she said, "I heard some of what you were talking about over there...Quil's right, you know."

Jacob looked down at her with a raised eyebrow. "About what?"

"It's pretty amazing how grown up all of you are already. It's strange to think it was only five years ago you were still that innocent and more carefree kid...when I had to tell you not to fight with your brothers..."

"Em, you're gonna make me cry," he said sarcastically.

"I mean it. I know you still have a lot of doubts about how well you handled that situation with the Cullens. But I couldn't be more proud of you. Sam was right to want you to lead the pack instead of him."

He smiled at her half-heartedly. "You know I'd much rather have stayed that innocent kid a lot longer..."

"Of course you would. That's why it's so admirable you didn't just endlessly wallow in bitterness about everything that's happened to you like Leah—Bless her."

Jacob raised an eyebrow again, mouth tightening in a small smile.

"Okay, so you had plenty moments of complaining and self-pity, too," she said, making him laugh. "But you've still become capable of always doing what you know you have to, no matter how much you don't like it or how hard it is. And I know whatever happens to you now...even if you don't find someone for you anytime soon, or even _ever_...you'll be able to handle it and you'll be okay. I think you could handle anything."

He smiled warmly, leaned down and kissed her cheek. "Do you know how much I love you to death? And you really do look nice, by the way."

She smiled back at him. "I guess I feel nice. I feel...surprisingly great. I thought this would be a lot harder, you know. All of this when our whole family should still be here, but they're not..."

He nodded somberly. "I know."

"And it _is_ hard, but...I don't know. A couple months ago it felt like the world might as well be coming to an end and it was hard to have any hope. And now...Kim and Jared are married and very happy today. I'm about to have a baby. Bella had been dead to you for years, and now she's a good friend again. We've all still got each other, when things could have ended up a lot worse. And with the Cullens gone, we should finally have some peace here. What happened with the Volturi was terrible, but because of it and the trust you were willing to establish between us and the Cullens, we ended up breaking a cycle going back many generations, and that's pretty incredible if you think about it. It's possible nobody will ever have to be turning into werewolves here ever again."

Jacob let that sink in for a while. Then he said, "If that's the case, then I guess after enough time there won't be anybody who even believes the legends are true anymore."

Emily looked at him closely and curiously, tilting her head a little. "Jacob Black. Don't tell me that makes_ you_ a little sad. The thought of there being no more protectors ever again after you're gone, nothing special and magical about this place anymore?"

He let out a short laugh and said sarcastically, "Well gee, when you make it sound that _cheery_..."

"Yeah," she said with a knowing smirk. "I thought so."

"What?"

"The crazy kind of life you've had...even though it's brought you a lot of trouble and grief...I bet as long as it wasn't for the people you've seen die, you wouldn't ever trade it in for a normal one. Not for anything."

He looked like he wanted to disagree at first. But then after some consideration, he sighed and just looked at her with slightly narrowed eyes, seeming annoyed by her ability to figure him out so easily.

"Let's just enjoy a normal life today and not think about it," he said, and she smiled in agreement.

* * *

After another month passed, Bella started going to high school again for the first time of many. She actually enjoyed going on long shopping sprees with Alice during the first weeks of living in their new town, because nobody here knew her and it was okay for her to be seen. Starting anew in a different place felt so liberating in many ways that it made her wonder why she had been hanging onto something that she'd already lost for so long by wanting to stay hiding away in their house in Forks.

Two months later, Jacob came home from work to find a note Billy had left him on the fridge before leaving with Sue: _It's a girl. Anna Lucille. 7.5 pounds._

Seven months later, the pack and their families met together at a bonfire to commemorate the deaths of their friends a year ago. Paul's mother told stories about him misbehaving as a boy that had everybody laughing and tearing up at the same time. When Leah started sniffling beside him, Brady reached for her hand resting on the log they sat on and squeezed it. She didn't look at him, but for a split second she smiled a little.

From far away, sitting alone, Bella watched and listened, running her bare toes over the sand.

* * *

The Uleys came over to Jacob's house to drop off some lasagna Emily had made. She nearly always had an overabundance of food she'd cooked and would end up handing some of it off to other people whether they needed it or not.

Sharp eyes watched the meeting from outside the tiny kitchen window, curiously observing as Anna, now three years old, came scampering in with her parents following her. Bella could easily make out their words.

"Hey, Banana," Jacob said brightly, looking down at her with his hands hidden behind his back. "Have you got a new dress?"

Anna nodded her head, grinning big, and said, "My grandma made it."

"I should have known," he said, smiling over at Emily as she put the food away for him; he knew Emily's mother to be some kind of genius seamstress. "Hey, I've got a surprise for you."

"Where?" Anna said, restlessly rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet.

Jacob took his hands out from behind his back in closed fists, showing them both to her. "You'll have to guess what hand it's in."

She stared for a moment, then pointed to his right. "That one!"

"The left?" he asked, holding up the other one. "Are you sure?"

"No, _that_ one!" she said, giggling.

"Okay, if you say left..." He opened his large left hand to show her a little bottle of bubbles, faking astonishment. "Woah, how did that get there?"

Anna took it excitedly and then as she started filling the kitchen with the bubbles she blew out of the tiny wand attached to the cap, Sam said to him with an amused smile, "Now she'll never calm down. Quit spoiling my kid, huh?"

Jacob laughed and nudged him with his elbow. "Whatever, I just found it in my box of cereal today."

Smiling, Bella watched them all together for another minute, and then while Jacob was momentarily turning away from the others to put something in the garbage, she said something to him with her mind. _Hi. I'll just see you at the usual place when you've got time._

His reaction could not give away to anyone else there what was happening, but his brief smile to himself after he went still for a second in surprise was enough to know he'd gotten the message. After that she turned and quickly fled.

Inside, Sam was getting a slightly disgusted look on his face and looking around. He glanced out the window just moments after he might have been able to see something for a second. "It really reeks in here," he muttered.

"Sorry," Jacob said, knowing he didn't need to explain what it was. "She must have come by here while I was out earlier. At least it's always easy to tell so I know I can expect her to drop in again soon."

Emily looked at him with her arms crossed, raising an eyebrow. "Couldn't she just _call _when she wants to drop by? They've got phones."

He smiled. "Animals can communicate through scent very effectively," he said, jokingly matter-of-fact.

Sam gave a short laugh. "I wonder if it would do much to keep other leeches off our lands if we marked our territory by pissing on trees—_Ow_," he said, getting a kick from Emily's foot for forgetting to watch his mouth around Anna, though she was still completely distracted playing with her new toy. He and Jacob both laughed as he reached for her hand with an apologetic look. "Sorry."

As soon as they had left a while later, Jacob grabbed a can of soda from the fridge before heading outside. He drank it as he walked energetically toward the woods, heading to a designated place he and Bella both knew about half a mile past where the trees ended going into the neighborhood, easily recognizable by an especially huge tree with some thick upraised roots.

He found her sitting delicately on one of the roots, patiently waiting. As he approached he finished off his drink, crushed the can flat in his hands, and then put it away in the pocket of his jeans. She turned to look at him with a smile of greeting, and he stayed back about eight feet, remembering it was always harder right at first for her to be exposed to his scent again.

"No need to be so shy," he said as he started pulling his shirt off over his head.

"I don't like to interrupt your plans," Bella said with a shrug.

"Coming in and saying hi isn't interrupting. You could have met Anna."

"Yeah, I bet Sam would love that," she said sarcastically.

"He should. You were kind of looking out for her before she was even born." He was now pulling his shoes and socks off, starting to make a pile of all his clothes on the ground.

She just shrugged again. "I'm glad I got to see her anyway."

As he turned slightly away and started unbuttoning his pants, she looked away.

"Nothing you haven't seen before," he pointed out teasingly.

She smiled tightly as she heard him finishing undressing. "Not from every angle," she said, as if that was very relevant.

Jacob laughed. "I guess that's true."

Shortly after that came the brief sound from behind her of bones converging and straining in lightning-fast rearrangement and then the ground giving under the added weight of some great mass. She stood up and looked behind her shoulder at the reddish-brown wolf with a challenging grin.

"Ready?" she asked.

He came forward to stand next to her, not going past the large tree. It was always their starting point, and a point a few miles off in the distance that used to be where the treaty line was drawn was the destination. Bella crouched down in a ready position, and his large yellow eyes watched her count down with her fingers, three two _one_.

They both propelled themselves forward, shooting off as fast as bullets. Jacob pounded against the ground heavily with every quick stride while Bella's tiny and graceful feet were effortlessly quiet, but for a while they kept about the same speed. There were about seven feet of space maintained in between them, and as Bella ran with a fired up smile and her hair whipping back behind her, she could look to the side and see Jacob's big right eye looking at her through all the thick foliage they charged through and past.

But when they got closer to the end point he started gaining speed, finally putting all of his energy into it, and started passing her. This was how it usually happened. After playing quite a lot of baseball games with her family, Bella knew by now she had only average speed for a vampire. Up against a werewolf that usually wasn't quite enough; as long as he wasn't tired at all, Jacob would beat her in a race nearly every time.

Sure enough, Bella was eventually chasing the sight of his tail flying behind him as he got many meters ahead of her, and then he made one final long leap to the finishing point, stopping so abruptly his paws slid forward a little clumsily on the muddy ground before he turned around.

She was laughing at his ungraceful stop as she met him there, and he growled ungratefully.

"Maybe I hardly ever beat you," she started in a teasing tone, turning away from him as she looked down at how dirty her shoes were now, "but at least I can come to a sudden stop without nearly falling over."

His smell suddenly came looming very close, and before she had the chance to look behind her he shoved his snout hard into her back and pushed her over onto the ground.

"Jake!" she said with annoyance, turning around with the front of her clothes now covered in mud, and his throat just rumbled with his odd-sounding wolf laughter.

"That's it," she said decidedly as she got back on her feet. "We're going again."

When they raced all the way back to where they'd started, she didn't beat him this time either.

After he was human again and had changed back into his clothes, they walked toward the beach together as night was falling, and he told her, "Don't worry. You'll catch up to me someday."

Her smile then was just a little sad. She knew that was true.

* * *

The Cullens' new home was in a secluded area in the mountains and was even larger than their last house, with grand balconies extending from two of the bedrooms and enough rooms for Edward to keep two pianos now. Bella had turned half of the top floor into a studio for her to paint in. It was the one place in the house she had all to herself and would go to spend time alone with her thoughts doing something that came easily; Edward had joked once that she had finally found a relaxing activity to replace sleeping.

She honestly didn't find that too far from the truth. Instead of working through her thoughts with revelations in dreams, she painted pictures now. In fact, she painted more than they knew what to do with. A couple years ago she had started a website to start selling some of her paintings under a pseudonym, including a bio describing herself as a 36-year-old male restaurant owner who lived in Indiana with his boyfriend which made Emmett die laughing when she read it out loud to everybody. By now she'd starting gaining enough minor cult popularity that everything always sold within an hour, and none of her buyers knew that she gave most of their money away to charity.

One afternoon when she had been painting and listening to Edward playing downstairs for a while, she heard his footsteps on the first floor as he started to walk away from the piano after finishing a sonata and said something to him by putting her voice in his head. _Can't you play one more, please?_

She could hear him laugh lightly as he went back to the bench, and then the house filled with delicate notes again as he started Debussy's "Pagodes."

Everyone knew Bella enjoyed some measure of privacy while she was painting, but later Edward got too nosy about what she was coming up with today as he often did and came into the studio to see her for a moment. She turned to smile invitingly at him and then looked back at the canvas she was working on, continuing to paint with incredibly fast brush strokes that would almost be just a blur of movement to a human's eyes.

"Hm," he said, looking around at other ones she had finished which were still drying. "These are different. Is there some theme here, or are you going completely abstract now?"

Bella grinned a little, rising from her seat to go stand beside him. "It's a series," she explained. "They're not exactly supposed to be_ abstract. _I just got this thought of trying to visualize and paint things...you know...that can't actually be seen. Different feelings and perceptions. Like this..."

She pointed to one which was an explosion of intricately detailed textures in soft pastel colors in the center of a dark gray background. "This is titled _The Caress of Light_. It's the feeling of sun on your skin."

Edward's brow slowly lifted as he looked at it. "But only the way it feels to us," he said, somehow getting a clear idea that it depicted a sense much more intense than the way a human feels the warmth of the sun.

She nodded. "Well, yeah. And this other one is _The Shape of Song._ It's the sound of you playing piano."

He looked at that one closely, taking in the soft impressions of different purple and blue colors that filled it. Then he pointed to the only other finished one, which was all in very bold colors and had a much more aggressive and messy feeling. "And that one?"

"That's the sound of a _human_ playing piano," Bella answered.

He broke into laughter at her joking tone, and then she shook her head.

"No, that one's...Well, I'm calling it _The Music of Blood_."

Edward's face went a little more serious in realization, and he stared into the canvas for a long moment like he was falling into its bizarre and wild beauty. "It's...the scent of blood," he said. "Blood that sings for you."

She nodded.

He was now shaking his head slowly in amazement. "That's remarkable," he said, looking around at all the paintings again. "It's like...I can somehow understand exactly what you're trying to convey, and the sensations just jump out at me. I said your talent must have something to do with being able to express how you see things to others, but...How do you _do_ it?"

She shook her head, seeming to feel overly complimented. "It's not like you'd ever be able to tell what these are supposed to be depictions of if I didn't tell you. It's only when I explain the title of each one that it just clicks."

He smiled and then shrugged. "Well, the effect is very impressive nonetheless." He looked at them some more and started sighing. "They won't mean much to the people who buy them."

"A lot of my art doesn't make sense to people outside of our world," she said. "But the stranger they are and the more cryptic the titles are, the more people seem to like them."

He laughed again. "Or perhaps you have a few fans who aren't fooled by your bio—at least the part that says most of your work is inspired by dreams. That painting _The Protector and the Cold Woman_ might have sold to someone who knows a lot more about certain Native American legends than the average person and didn't just think it was romantic. And the one of yourself shimmering in the sunlight with blood all over your clothes and a flower in your hair? Somebody might have found the title _Diamonds Are Forever_ sort of funny and not that cryptic."

Bella's eyes widened just a little at the thought, and then she crossed her arms and continued to look at all the paintings thoughtfully. "I don't know...I like the idea of people with mundane lives owning a little piece of my life and being able to enjoy it as just fantasy. It makes me feel like I can still be a little connected to their world."

He smirked. "And so the legacy of our kind often perpetuating the myths of our kind themselves continues into the twenty-first century."

She giggled, leaning into him and wrapping her arms around him. He held her with a content sigh, kissing her cheekbone, and then she put a thought of hers into his head which made him laugh adoringly—an image of them alone together in a luxurious room somewhere in Greece.

"Again?" he asked. "We just got back from going away together two months ago."

"But we go back to school soon," she said. "We won't have as many chances for that sort of thing during the year."

"This is true. We'll have to think about it."

Her next thought she once again communicated directly into his head: _That's no fun. We should be more spontaneous._

He laughed again, leaned in and kissed her, and they kept their foreheads rested together for a while.

"How did I ever live without being able to talk to you like this?" Bella wondered. After just a few years of finally having mastered all the aspects of her abilities, it was already as natural to her as if she'd always been able to do it and was now very hard to imagine being without.

He only shook his head a little in answer. Then in a swift, silent movement together, they had both lowered themselves to the floor as they started kissing again.

_Now_, she said as he gently pressed her back onto the wood floor. _Right here._ For it occurred to her that it was one thing they'd never done.

He held her hand back against the floor by her head, intertwining his fingers through hers and smiling eagerly down at her. "No wonder you find it so horribly distracting when I come in here," he muttered.

She laughed softly before she lifted her head up a little and his lips found hers again with an invigorated force.

* * *

The next time Bella visited Forks was at Christmas. She was there waiting patiently by Jacob's window when he woke up after sleeping in quite a bit, a wrapped gift sitting at her feet.

"Well, good morning," he said with surprise, and then raised an eyebrow when he noticed the package. "Santa came?"

Bella smiled. "It's a blanket I had as a little girl," she explained. "And which my mom also had as a little girl. It's something I've been holding onto just for the memories, but we've been getting rid of a lot of things to get ready to move again and I thought...maybe Anna..."

He nodded. "Sure, sure," he said through a yawn as he got out of bed. "Sam and Em would love for her to have it. And they'll probably guess it's not really from me or Billy as soon as they see it's wrapped."

"You don't wrap your Christmas presents?" Bella asked.

Jacob left the room and she heard him go into the closet for a moment. He came right back to show her a couple tied plastic bags with bows stuck on them with a sheepish smile.

She sighed, shaking her head, and then she took the two pathetic gift bags as she passed him to leave the room. "Get dressed," she said, "and then I'll show you how this is done."

Bella found a neglected supply of gift wrap after a fast search through his house, and then they sat on the floor of the den as she helped him wrap up a mind-boggling amount of gifts for all his friends and some of his friends' parents or kids, trying to give him quick lessons along the way in curling ribbon and folding the ends of packages neatly.

"You can only do this because you've got such dainty little hands," he complained after doing the best he could to get Jared's box to look good.

Bella suddenly freezed in the middle of finishing the last package, and then she looked toward the front of the house.

"What?" he asked, looking over at her.

"Somebody just pulled up outside the house," she said curiously, and then quickly started finishing wrapping the present in fast blurs of movement as she kept talking. "A woman. I hear her talking on her phone."

"Oh crap, it's Lilah," Jacob said, looking over at the clock. "You know, my friend—Is it really past noon already?"

"Lilah's spending Christmas with you?" Bella asked.

He shrugged. "One year Sue insisted I bring her along to have dinner at her house after she met her once and found out she doesn't really do anything on Christmas. Her dad's kind of an intense religious freak who disowned her years ago, so...Anyway, now it's become a yearly thing and she and Leah are sort of tight and it's just plain freaky..."

Bella laughed and then looked toward the front door as she could hear Lilah getting close. As she started to stand up, Jacob held a hand out and stopped her.

"Hey, just sit tight," he said. "It's fine."

She tilted her head at him, looking a little doubtful. "What are you going to say?"

"Don't worry about it," he said, shrugging. Then after he heard a knock at the door he called, "Come in!"

Lilah burst in through the door mumbling a stream of curse words describing how cold it was, holding a coat tight around herself and carrying something in a plastic bag.

"Good God, you can hardly tell which house is which around here," she was saying breathlessly as she pulled a newsboy hat off of her short-cropped hair and headed right into the den. "With all the snow piling up on your....Hi."

Her voice trailed off weakly and just barely got the last word out as she noticed Bella.

"Hey," Jacob said to her, then nodded toward the bag. "What's that?"

Lilah's attention was partially entranced by the unexpected sight of Bella, and she kept staring at her a moment before she realized she was staring and finally looked back at Jacob, giving him a delayed answer. "Uh. Pie. It's a pecan pie."

Jacob looked a little unpleasantly caught by surprise. "Oh...Uh...You didn't have to bring anything."

Bella grinned at his slightly scared expression while Lilah rolled her eyes a little; it seemed obvious that Jacob had had bad experiences before with food Lilah had touched.

"No need to run away screaming," she promised. "It's _store-bought_."

Jacob laughed and then noticed her glancing curiously at Bella again. "Sorry," he said, gesturing toward the alarmingly beautiful girl next to him as he stood up. "This is my friend Bella."

"Hey," Lilah said with a smile.

"Hi, you must be Lilah," Bella said amiably as she got to her feet as well. "And it's really nice meeting you, but I better get going."

Lilah occupied herself finding somewhere to throw her coat off after she and Jacob turned to each other to say goodbye. Bella could hear him holding his breath as she came close to hug him, as he often did to make the smell not so bothersome when he got very close to her; his voice sounded a little tight when he whispered close to her ear, "See you."

When she drew back, she raised a hand to his face with a last warm smile, sliding it away as she walked past him toward the front door. After putting her gloves away in her coat pockets, Lilah came to stand closer to Jacob and watched as she stopped one last time at the door.

"You guys have a nice time," she said to them with a last smile before opening it, letting a charge of freezing air into the house and then abruptly leaving through it.

"Well, they're not supposed to eat until two, but I'm sure we can go on over to the Clearwaters'," Jacob said. "Just have to wake up my dad from his nap..."

When he looked back at Lilah, he found her still staring at the door Bella had left through in some awe.

"Hey. Lilah." Smiling in amusement, he whistled to get her to look at him.

She turned her head, still seeming a little bewildered, and then finally said, "My God, Jacob. I mean...Wow. Isn't she a little young for you?"

He had to laugh loudly at the irony, and then he just shook his head as he turned away from her to get his own coat. "Actually, she's way too much for me to handle."

"Yeah right," she said, snorting with laughter. "_You?_...Weren't you ever going to tell me?"

"What?" Jacob asked, throwing his hands up innocently as he turned back to her. "I've known Bella forever. There's nothing to tell."

"As if. She looks like she's kind of lost except when she's looking at your face."

He just smirked at her a little mysteriously. "She's married."

Lilah's brow shot up. "Woah. I guess I actually _don't _want to know."

He smiled uncontrollably, laughing more. "No, it's not like _that_. Well...I mean..."

She started laughing as well after he kept struggling to explain it. "Well, yeah, I guess she looks a little too..._straight-edge_ for that."

"Maybe I like them that way," he said, his mysteriousness now much more joking. "I'm full of surprises."

She broke out into laughter again. "Uh-huh...I bet _she_ makes a real nice pie," she said, now just teasing him.

He grinned and then shrugged, saying, "She used to."

Lilah raised an eyebrow at that but then just shook her head, dismissing the comment like she was used to ignoring all the other strange sorts of things he sometimes said by now.

* * *

When Bella came home that day, she went right to her bathroom to shower first as she usually did after she'd been away in Forks collecting an unpleasant wolf scent. Afterwards she found Edward waiting in their room, relaxing on the couch with his feet on the table listening to Nina Simone. She came up behind the back of the couch and leaned over him, putting her arms around his shoulders and planting little kisses on his neck. With his eyes closed and a content smile on his face, he just stayed still a while before finally pulling her over the back of the couch into his lap.

"Merry Christmas," he said. "Did you give the Uleys the gift?"

"I didn't see them," Bella said. "But Jake will give it to them. They'll probably just tell the girl it was something that belonged to his mother or something, not that it should make much difference to a five-year-old whether it's new or not."

Edward nodded. "I'm glad you thought of a better use for it than throwing it away. You have gotten rid of so many of your other things by now."

She shrugged. "When I decided to keep a lot of that stuff before I was turned, I thought I was getting rid of all the more important things. A while ago I couldn't have imagined letting go of my mom's blanket now that I've lost my mom. But now I still have ways of knowing what's going on with all the people I've left behind. And I've still got my best friend after all this time. That's all that matters, I don't need all the _stuff_."

He smiled at her, and then after a while he started to look deeply thoughtful. "May I ask you something?" he said, circling his arms around her waist. "It may seem like a strange question..."

"What?" she asked.

He sighed, thinking a while before he spoke again. "I spend so much time cursing that day I left you, hating that I ever did it and left you alone for so long because of the consequences. But sometimes I wonder if...now that you have known Jacob and had all that time becoming close to him, if you would ever really wish I could go back and undo it."

Bella looked surprised. "Of course I would," she said easily. "I mean—now that I know what I'd be missing by never knowing him like I do now, I guess it could be hard to give that up, but that's exactly why I never should have known—"

He held a hand up, stopping her, and said, "I suppose what I really mean to ask is if you really would have prefered to be completely alone that whole time, rather than end up hurting him."

"Yes. 'Prefered' is a strange word, but it just wouldn't be fair to say otherwise."

He thought a while, looking like he still had not gotten quite the answer he was looking for. "Alright. What if you had still come to know him that well but it was different, and he had never seen you as potentially anything more than a friend, but during that time I was gone you still fell in love with him? If it would have ended up hurting you but never him, would you want to give that up?"

She stared off into the air for a moment, looking like this question, much more than the others, had completely taken her by surprise. Finally she shook her head and said, "I don't know if I can really imagine that."

"Why?"

She shook her head more, still looking like she was thinking hard about it. "Because it just wouldn't have...You have to_ really love_ somebody to do what he did for me. But what's so strange to think about is at the same time, he was being so selfless all along; it's not like he _had_ to have that certainty that I could eventually return his feelings as a motivation. He was my friend and he did everything he possibly could for me and took care of me while you weren't there, even though he knew I was in no condition to be able to be his girlfriend or anything like that anytime soon. Like you said it yourself, he was the one who stitched me up after you'd left me bleeding. He did all of that only to end up watching me run right back to the person who had hurt me so badly in the first place. But the thing is...I know that if_ he_ was given the choice to go back and do it all over again, knowing how it would end, he would. In a second. He would never choose to leave me all alone. And it's only that kind of love and that much kindness from somebody, and no less, that ever could have made me able to fall in love with anybody besides you."

Edward took that in and then nodded with understanding. "I suppose if _he_ at least could never have any regrets about how it happened, that is somewhat of a relief," he admitted.

Bella smiled at him slowly, taking his face in both her hands to make him look directly at her. "I'm sure of this much," she said. "I couldn't be the person I am now without having known him. And yes, there's a part of me that will always feel things for him that can't ever be resolved, and I'll always have a hard time living with that. But more than anything else in my life, he is the thing that has showed me that people can survive and move on from just about anything. Even people like us, despite the fact that we change a lot less easily and a lot less often than humans do. And there are even times that I look back and I feel as if I was only living half a life with you before I knew the full pain of loving somebody else and knowing what could have been and then realized there was never anything perfect about us. Before then it was an escape for me, like a fantasy, not something that the ups and downs of reality could ever touch...

"But you can't just run and enjoy that kind of escape for eternity. You've got to put your feet in the ground and grow together at some point, even though it can hurt. And I guess that's how I feel about my entire relationship with Jacob, as painful as it's been at times. That's why I can't just move on and try to forget about him. He's been an integral part of my experiences and I can't exactly _regret_ any of that now."

Edward was starting to smile very happily, brushing some of her hair back. "I don't know how you became this comfortable with yourself," he said with amazement, "but I hope you know how incredibly happy it makes me to see you this way now."

She smiled back. "Well, _I'm_ happy," she said. "So maybe it's time you stopped dwelling on all your regrets every time I go away to see him. Maybe it was a mistake to get so close to him at first, but I'm better with him than without him now."

"Very well." Edward reached for his stereo remote to turn off the music. "We better go join our family. I know we don't usually give gifts, but I have a feeling I'm not the only one who cheated this year."

Bella laughed. "Wonderful, more stuff I don't need to take with me when we move."

"Regularly replenishing your supply of things you don't need is part of being a Cullen, sweetheart," he said with a humored grin.

"Because we already have everything we could ever need," she said with a warm smile.

He leaned in to kiss her softly and said, "That is quite true."

* * *

Then once when she came to Jacob's house in the early evening, she found him looking through magazines in bed with a cast on his leg and his head bandaged. As she came into his window, she noticed at once that he smelled differently than she was used to—still familiar and like _him_ and just as intensely attracting to her as ever, but not as unique with that unusual sense of _otherness_ his scent had always had before. His blood smelled like that of a normal human now. She did not have to find him recovering from what looked like severe injuries to understand very quickly what had changed.

"What in the world did you do to yourself?" she asked in a high and almost angry-sounding voice, carefully keeping as much distance from his bed as she could for now in the cramped little room. His smell was not only different but a little more potent than usual, gnawing at her senses from covered wounds.

"_Me?_" he asked, then laughed whole-heartedly. "It was some bimbo who ran a red light. You should see the_ car._"

She let out a quick breath in a sound of contained frustration. "Well, it looks like you picked a good time to give up being able to heal."

He laughed again, like the words made little sense to him. "It was almost four months ago that I stopped phasing. Think I look older yet?"

The way he turned his face back and forth to let her see every angle could only make her laugh a little, for he was so banged up and bruised that if he had actually aged noticeably in the last few months it was the last thing she could tell. And making the question sound funny was surely his intention, for his bright white smile was shining out among the painful-looking discoloration of the rest of his face as the one unquestionably recognizable part of his visage.

It was certainly an unusual visit. Bella eventually helped him out of his room so they could sit with the television on, and she ended up practically waiting on him all day so Billy wouldn't have to. Then she stayed past the time Billy had gone to bed, sitting at Jake's bedside and talking to him. They kept making each other giggle and laugh like kids trying and failing to stay quiet at a sleepover.

Then after a while she wondered something aloud. "You think it's still possible for you to end up imprinting now?"

Jacob slowly and unsurely shook his head. "Most of the others talk like it's not a serious risk anymore once we've gotten to this point," he said. "But I guess we can never know for sure. Sam's gone back to normal now, too, but it still doesn't seem like there's anything normal about his love for Emily. They say even once you've aged it's not completely impossible to make the change into the wolf again...Maybe I'll never be completely normal again, not inside and out."

She nodded. "Well, that's true regardless. You're a guy who gets regular visits a few times a year from a vampire friend who you know is a vampire."

He smiled and nodded in agreement. Then with a new thought he asked in a light and curious tone, "Do you think you'd still be a little jealous if it happened?"

Bella didn't have to think for long before answering. "Probably a little," she admitted. "But not because of you imprinting. It would be a bit hard to see you with anyone no matter what...It was even kind of surprisingly difficult meeting Lilah that one Christmas, actually."

His face lit up in complete surprise. "Seriously?"

She smiled herself at the ridiculousness of the idea. "I know. Even though I know it's been a long time since you guys dropped the whole friends-with-benefits arrangement..."

"Good lord, I'm so glad we never actually called it that," Jacob said with a sudden laugh, seeming to find something cringe-worthy about applying that wording to his and Lilah's initial relationship.

Bella smiled again. "I don't know. Of course I realize it's so petty and unreasonable, but seeing how beautiful she is, and yet in such an ordinary and _human_ way...It made me just the faintest bit envious. Maybe she never really had that much of you, but I suppose it was the one thing I've never been able to have from you anymore. When I first started seeing you again after being turned and found that you just couldn't really want me in a physical way anymore because of your strong natural aversion to my kind...Well, how could it not bother me just a little? Even though I knew it was probably better and easier for you that way, I couldn't help it."

He was grinning mildly. "Well, at least you're not going to smell awful to me anymore now," he said. "You can be sure we're _both_ happy about that no longer getting in the way."

She looked for a while like she was trying to think as optimistically, but as she kept looking close at him, something else about the thought of him changing like this and what it meant was threatening to dull her smile. And after a stretch of silence, she finally got out what she had to say to him.

"You can't get yourself hurt like this, okay?" she said softly. "You can't. Not again. I can't take it."

Her tone was half joking, masking vulnerability. But he could hear the underlying fear in her words and understand the true meaning. And he knew she didn't really think his answer would make any difference, but he just smiled at her tiredly and said in his encouraging way, "Okay."

He was starting to look and sound very sleepy, and a while after that he closed his eyes. She leaned over him and softly kissed his forehead, closing her own eyes for a moment. She stayed that way lingering right over him a little longer than any close physical contact between them was usually sustained, bringing a subtle and small smile to his face as he was distantly aware of it while already starting to doze off. Then she remained sitting at his side, watching the slow and peaceful movements of his body as he breathed, for a few hours into the night.

Sometimes when she came here and found him sleeping, she would use her talent to invade his unconscious thoughts and manipulate his dreams so that he would sometimes wake up later aware that she had been there even without her having spoken to him out loud. Tonight she did this only to let him see her still here with him late into the night and to say to him as he was still asleep, _I'm leaving now. Get better. Goodbye._

For Jacob, the dream did not stay coherent and orderly after she left, but took off on its own, drifting into other images and memories of her that he had dreamed of times before. Then he relived the half-remembered and half-imagined moment she had shown him once, the very first thing from her head she had ever used her talent to let him see: the two of them holding each other in his car at night, a light kiss on his shoulder...

He woke up with this image still in his mind, and he was alone. It was hard to tell how much of what he remembered dreaming had been manipulated, and there was something especially surreal and disorienting about waking up from the dreams this time. He reached up to his neck and then inside the collar of his shirt, running his fingers along his collar bone until he found the spot just at the top of his shoulder where his skin was ice-cold and there was still a tiny groove of a scar where Jane's sharp tooth had barely punctured him.

Even though it was Bella who had kept the venom from the bite from spreading, not caused the mark herself, when he saw it or touched it he always remembered the cold kiss she had left there forever, in place of letting all of him become something that could ever conceivably be hers. He closed his eyes again, smiling to himself a little before drifting back to sleep and feeling the peaceful sense of acceptance and safety it always gave him to acknowledge the way he was permanently marked there.

* * *

People heal. They do. Like the slow growth and budding of flowers, it is something that only happens delicately and without someone waiting and watching for it to finally happen.

Bella now wore the bluebird charm from the necklace Jane Healey had given her on her silver bracelet along with the wolf, and she could no longer think of Paul and Seth without also thinking of her. Every time she looked at it, she remembered that if she had never been turned that girl would probably not be alive. It was a reminder to herself of something she knew she had to accept in order to make things right. After an entire life of easily blaming and hating herself for things, she knew now that this could be just as harmful to others as the most selfish acts. There was a kind of cruelty and even meaningless easiness in self-punishment. Forgiving herself was the only real path to learning from the past and improving her life.

And maybe this was part of the reason she felt she had to keep seeing Jacob in order to preserve some important part of herself. Just sometimes. When she was with Edward, he made her feel beautiful and perfect and loved, like her flaws were just part of the way God had made her and she was proof that even monsters like them were his children. He could have made it easy to just start over and forget, because anything she did wrong he forgot. With him, she was always forgiven before the sin was even committed.

But with Jacob she felt like she was just what she was, just Bell, with everything undesirable that included. Nothing incredibly special. Forgiven, but perhaps not as easily or without any struggle. And still loved.

If it still gave her heart a stinging pang whenever she saw him again, she knew that was in part because being away from him in her still often dreamlike life with Edward usually made it easy to ignore the things she had lost and left behind, the sacrifices that life had cost. But she couldn't forget. Otherwise her relationship with Edward didn't even mean anything; it was just a life of constant denial and evasion, an illusion of perfection. She no longer needed that numbness from the rest of the world he could give her, and she found this meant her moments with him only made her happier than ever before.

Meanwhile, seeing Jacob was always like looking into a very honest mirror, because he had been so directly hurt by her and knew her weaknesses so well that her visits to him were like going to confession, a periodic reckoning. It was somehow impossible not to think more about what _she_ thought of herself when she was with him. Having to control herself while being around his scent made it impossible not to stay completely aware of the dangerous risks she took every single day by being what she was now. He had come to represent to her a manifestation of all her mistakes, and though he was fine now and it helped her to be able to see that to move on, this made him a part of her life that could not go away. She knew this was how it was meant to be, even if for her it would always be partially painful. She was always aware of how ironic it was that he would now be her redemption.

* * *

At some point after becoming a vampire, Bella had made some gradual but extreme change into the kind of person who was willing to go out dancing. It spoke for how dramatically different she was now that she did not even think about how this would have once been so unlike her the first time it happened, but later she couldn't be sure whether or not Edward had realized it but neglected to point it out during the night for fear of upsetting the possibly delicate miracle that was Bella dancing in a public place. It was simply one of the great many things that she now couldn't find it in her to stubbornly pass up now that she had such a long time ahead of her to live and reading books and being with Edward could only fill so much of that time.

So at some time, without consciously making it a goal, she'd started saying yes to everything just for the hell of it. Going to see a World Series game with Edward and Emmett. Shopping for lingerie with Rosalie. Learning German as long as Jasper was studying it because he found it a lot less boring if he could practice along with someone else. And now, for the fifth time this year, going out to a club with Edward where they actually had to use alternate fake IDs apart from the ones they usually carried because they had just moved to their current city of residence two years ago pretending to both be fifteen.

As they moved energetically together among the crowd, Edward bending over at one point and kissing her arched neck as her arms were draped loosely around his neck, the flashing lights gave their snow-white skin a blue tint. Just about everyone near was aware of them, stealing stares at them instead of paying attention to the band playing on stage, unable to miss their matched surreal beauty and the elegant way they moved that somehow seemed just not quite natural. The large crowd filling the place tonight was giving it some added heat that was slightly uncomfortable for everyone else to move through, but of course neither of them ever broke a sweat.

"What are you thinking about?" Bella asked him at one point while the band was playing a more mellow song and everyone around them was now moving to the music in a more relaxed, swaying way.

Edward smirked. "I believe that's supposed to be my line," he said.

She just grinned. "You just won't stop smiling."

He raised his brow a little. "I was _thinking_...that we should get married."

She gave a short laugh. "Again?"

"Yes, again. You know, renew our vows. Emmett and Rosalie have done it several times."

"What makes you want to do this now?"

"It's just occurred to me recently that it seems right. In many ways you could say we have started over since the time we were first married. You are a very different woman now—not just _physically_, of course—in all kinds of incredible and positive ways. And I just have a feeling that you would enjoy the idea more this time, so this time it could be for both of us rather than mostly for me as part of some bargain."

"Hmm." Bella smiled mysteriously. "Well, I suppose you'd have to ask me the proper way if I want to marry you to really be sure."

He returned her slightly sly smile, and then he reached for her left hand and slid off his mother's ring that she wore there. She started laughing as soon as he immediately dropped to the floor on one knee in front of her, holding it out in offering. As the entire surrounding crowd noticed what was going on with excited smiles and all turned toward them to watch while the band's current song was ending, she wasn't even the least bit embarrassed by the ridiculous amount of attention like she once would have been.

* * *

If there was one thing Jacob could say with certainty about his life now, it was that he never felt alone. Perhaps there was something about the kind of ties between people in a pack—not that they were really a pack of wolves anymore by now, just a family that once had access to every intimate detail of each other's lives and had been originally formed as that—or perhaps in part it was the shared loss they had experienced together and which nobody else could ever completely understand that made it hard to imagine becoming separated. But after all the years, not one of them had moved away from this place or even grown apart from anyone else in the group in the slightest. Jacob had realized by now that even if he'd never imprinted on someone, the kind of bond he shared just with his circle of friends was perhaps a lot more remarkable and strange than he was usually aware of. Nobody normal had what he had.

The turnout at the party that his friends threw for him at the Clearwaters' for his thirty-fifth birthday certainly validated his lack of any feelings of loneliness. Sue had apparently been watching the skies nervously all day hoping it wouldn't rain because she knew everyone coming wouldn't possibly fit inside her house, but luckily everyone enjoyed sitting in lawn chairs eating hot dogs and cake the whole time without so much as a sprinkle. By the time it got dark there were still over a dozen people hanging around, including Charlie who was having a beer with Jacob by then and having a laugh over some story he was explaining about a bad experience attempting to enjoy fishing with Billy, so Sue put out some lanterns and it was still a couple hours before they called it a night.

But even after the older guests and the couples who had to get their kids home and to bed had gone, a group stayed out together consisting of the former werewolf bachelors and bachelorette plus Embry, whose wife and son were currently out of town; Quil; and Claire, who at age twenty-one had grown into such a tireless party animal it was no wonder she and Quil were meant to be. They ended up going over to the Calls' otherwise empty house and sitting around the kitchen table doing shots together until it was past midnight, being very loud as they laughed over stories they told despite all of them already knowing most of them.

At one point when several of them all suddenly had to use the bathroom at the same time and everyone had gotten up, Brady tripped right over the dog bowl on the floor and only brought Embry right down with him as he clumsily tried to catch him from falling. It made Leah and Jacob both drop to the floor where they were as they exploded into raucous laughter at the exact same time. Then Quil came back in, still zipping up his fly after very quickly relinquishing the bathroom to Claire, and found Leah leaning against Embry for support as she completely doubled over in laughter, everybody who was still in the kitchen suddenly collapsed together on the floor.

Soon after that Quil left to take Claire home because she'd ended up closer to being ready to crash than anyone else, and then just the remaining four of them went out together to walk along the beach. Embry was laughing at Leah and Brady as they played around like they were fifteen, Brady starting to carry her along on his back after complaining about her meandering slowly behind them all, when it suddenly entered Jacob's head: Bella's voice, like the nudging presence of another consciousness suddenly inside him, unmistakable but a little slowly registered as real in his less than sober state. She didn't exactly say anything except just a brief greeting of _Hey_, but then he saw an image of a wide view of the beach and of himself and the other three as distant moving figures from high up on one of the cliffs, everything appearing through her eyes in vivid contrast and detail despite how dark it was and how far away from them she had to be. It was all clearly just to tell him she was up there somewhere, watching him with his friends, waiting so he could have his fun with them for now and just checking in so that he'd know.

When Brady glanced at his watch twenty minutes later, he looked a little shocked. "Holy crap."

"Yeah, it's time to get the hell to _bed_," Embry said.

Looking around at all the others, Jacob said, "Go on, I think I want to stay out here a while."

"By _yourself?_" Leah asked, and he just shrugged in answer.

"I can't believe we're still out," Brady said to him with a light laugh. "It hasn't been your birthday anymore for almost two hours."

"Oh, good," Leah said in a dryly joking tone, "that means we can all leave."

"Aw Leah, c'mere," Jacob said, grabbing her close and squeezing her with intentionally overdone enthusiasm to annoy her.

"Oh, get off of me," she muttered as he forcefully kissed her cheek. But her arms had loosely found their way around him too, and then after he let her go she gave his chest a rough pat. "Whatever you're gonna do out here, don't _drown_, idiot."

He chuckled at that, something vaguely affectionate in his smile. His bones were starting to feel as unstable as water; as she turned away, he dropped down to sit on the ground, laughing briefly at himself when he landed rather fast and sloppily on his behind. Brady leaned over to clasp hands with him in an incomplete sort of handshake and then slapped him on the shoulder as he said goodnight, and then Embry stopped by him and kneeled to grab him into a hug.

"The girl's right, stay away from the water," he said, and Jacob laughed again and pat him on the back before Embry pulled away and then looked straight at his face. "Hey. I love you, brother."

Raising a hand to take hold of his shoulder firmly, Jacob smiled. "Yeah. You, too."

"I fucking love you to a million pieces. Happy birthday, okay?"

Embry then set his hands lightly on his shoulders as he kissed his forehead. Jacob gave a low, warm laugh as he stood up. "Get outta here," he mumbled after him with a happy grin, giving a final wave to all three of the others.

They were out of hearing range but not even out of sight yet when Jacob felt something being lowered over his shoulders and turned with a bit of a start to see Bella kneeling beside him.

"You don't have a body temperature of a hundred and six anymore," she said as if he needed to be reminded, putting his jacket around him which she had evidently grabbed from his house. "It's a little cold."

He just stared at her face and slowly, adoringly smiled. Somehow he was especially happy to see her tonight.

"Happy birthday, Jacob," she said.

"You're a little late," he pointed out, starting to thread his arms through the sleeves of the jacket.

"I'm always a little late or early to come to tell you happy birthday. It's completely deliberate. Birthdays should be spent with the living, don't you think?"

He laughed. "I guess that's true...But you never completely miss it."

"No. I don't intend to ever miss one."

He frowned just a little at those words. "But it must be a little sad for you...Does it feel to you like nineteen years has gone by really fast?"

"Doesn't it feel a little like that even to you?" she asked.

He shrugged and said, "I suppose. But at the same time...what a damn _life_ it's been in so little time. It's weird to think I've still got more than double this much time left if all works out well. What else could possibly happen?"

Bella just shook her head, smiling faintly.

He looked to the side at her thoughtfully and said, "And I guess you turned out to be the love of my life, as crazy as that is."

"I don't know about that," she said, raising her brow a little. "You've still got a lot of your life left."

"Yeah, but still, the phrase isn't necessarily reserved for the last person who you happen to love in the final years before you die," he said lightly.

"True," she agreed, echoing his absence of seriousness in her tone, and then she sighed. "I guess there just needs to be a whole new phrase invented for what you are to me."

After sitting still in thought for a while after that, Jacob slowly moved to stand up. She followed, guessing where they were headed and going right along silently as he started walking leisurely across the beach. At one point he stumbled ungracefully over a rock he couldn't see in the dark, and they both giggled as she had to grab him before he fell.

"Wow," he just said with vague embarrassment.

"This is funny," Bella said with an amused smile, threading her arm through his as they went on walking as if to help support him if he tripped again. "I've never seen you drunk before."

"I know. It's not really fair. I'll never get to see _you_ drunk." With a sudden thought he flashed her a joking grin and asked, "So you feel like racing me _now?_"

This got a cheerful laugh out of her for a second. But at the same time the suggestion seemed to bring some of the night's more burdensome thoughts back into her mind, and right afterwards her expression became a little detached and blank and she couldn't seem to look at him.

After they kept going a while, he retracted his arm that she was holding hers around and took her hand in his instead. They walked holding hands the rest of the way to their familiar spot with the driftwood bench, still there after all these years though in much more weathered shape, and then their hands remained clasped when they sat on the ground in front of it with their backs rested against it.

"This has been a very good day," Jacob commented peacefully. "Now I've spent it with everyone who I care about."

As Bella looked to the side watching him closely, it seemed to be getting harder for her to smile.

"You okay?" he asked her, noticing her face.

She nodded. "Yeah. It's just strange. You...You really are thirty-five." As she said it, she somehow looked like she was seeing his face clearly for the first time in a while, as if she had not realized until just this night how different he really looked now.

He brushed it off with his familiar bright smile, the one that was still like a branding iron searing straight into her heart and automatically warming it, and it seemed to take ten years off of his appearance. "Still looking good, though, right?" he said.

She finally smiled again, a smile of genuine and natural warmth coming from deep inside. "Yes...In a way you kind of look better than you ever have, actually."

"You're not the first person to tell me that," he said with an amused look, sounding like it was something sort of funny and hard to understand to him.

"It's hard to describe. The older you get, the more...relaxed you are, I guess. More like the way you were before you ever even knew all those legends and my kind are real."

He shrugged. "I try."

She laughed a little. "You do more than that. You're probably going to live sixty more years out of sheer stubbornness. You just don't give up and get too worn down by anything."

He smiled, his chest shaking with a quiet solitary laugh. Then he looked at her again, seeing the still somewhat heavy look on her face as she just stared off at the ocean, and he nudged her lightly with his elbow. "Hey. What is it?"

She stayed silent for a few seconds. Then when she looked directly at him, for a moment she did not bother hiding the wistful hint of sadness in her eyes.

"I really love you," she said quietly, the look in her eyes very soft. Then she bowed her head down a little, looking away and smiling slightly like she felt kind of silly. "That's all."

He neither smiled or looked sad in response to that. He looked away from her with a thoughtful expression, and then he raised her hand in his and kissed the back of it, closing his eyes. Lowering it back down, he just said in a tone faintly echoing the cocky way he used to talk much more often, "I know."

Bella smirked mildly, inched closer to him and leaned against his side. He naturally bent his head toward her to rest it on top of hers, bringing his left arm back to rest across the driftwood log behind her so that his hand was draped over her shoulder. The cool breeze blew his long shoulder-length hair close to her face so that his scent was wafted past her in strong constant currents, but she did not even go rigid with the effort of resistance. Even though the urge to taste it again was always there, his blood hardly ever felt like a disturbance anymore, but simply a part of him. She just closed her eyes and drew it in, experiencing the smell of him fully just as she always had to hang onto every moment with him. She knew, as strange as it was, that the scent was something she would miss one day. The horribly powerful temptation it gave her that she could never give into was not what she would remember.

"I heard from your dad that the sun is supposed to be out today," Jacob said softly after the prolonged silence. "It's not predicted to get that sunny 'til later in the day, but I was thinking I'd like to stay out the rest of the night and see if there's a bright sunrise anyway...Will you wait and watch it with me?"

She smiled at the thought. If they saw a beautiful dawn, the sight would be just like the one portrayed in the painting of this place she'd given him long ago.

"Sure," she said softly. "I'll stay here as long as you want."

So together they stayed there. Even if the sun did not come out uncovered by clouds in the morning, it would be worth waiting together to see.

They always had to make the most of what they had left. There was nothing else left for them to do but find the meaning and beauty in the strange and tumultuous patterns of their inextricably bound lives. They were not lovers and they also were not just friends, not exactly, just as they'd said long ago they could never be. Bella knew probably neither of them could deny that it sometimes felt as if they were in some kind of a relationship in their own way; even without wandering from her commitments in any way, she got something out of her time with him that her relationship with Edward could not give her. He was never hers and yet he was, in a place strung between them invisibly and never physically manifest, in her thoughts she didn't have to tell him for him to know. In her thoughts she did show him. In vivid images of her and them together that still visited him in his sleep and could always make him feel amazingly young again.

They carried on this way so that the absence of the fulfillment of having became inconsequential next to just being and embracing what they were, seeing that wherever they were now was only where they chose to be and so there was little reason to be unhappy, learning to define their own destiny. It was him who had shown her how to do this and put her back together once again. They made up and painted their own sunrises in the darkness when there were none to see.

**

* * *

**

**the **| **end**


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